What a Difference a Year Makes: 8760 Little Hours
by SASundance
Summary: Sequel to Will the Real Narcissist Please Stand Up? It picks up 1 year after Tony's resignation and examines how his departure has affected himself , the MCRT and NCIS. This story is AU and slightly tongue-in-cheek. If you are blindly devoted to the metaphor of the MCRT as a loving family then you might want to skip this story. Features a strong competent Tony and OC
1. Chapter 1

Rating: T

Disclaimer: None of the characters from NCIS belong to me and this story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Warnings: Some less than flattering analysis and portrayal of Gibbs, McGee and Ziva so if you are blindly devoted to them then this story is definitely not for you. Also this story by definition, as a sequel to a 'what if' story, is most assuredly AU in nature. Also, I feel like I should warn you that the bits most likely to offend some people were all written months before the changes to the cast were announced and the current appalling mêlée resulting in cast members and their families (including those not yet born) being attacked and threaten. Do the words 'get a life and chill out' resonant with any of these so called fans?

A/N Here we go again - the sequel to Will the Real Narcissist Please Stand up? As you probably surmised from the title, this story picks up one year after Tony's resignation from NCIS and features four chapters from the point of view from each of the original members of the MCRT plus a prologue from Director Vance examining how Tony's departure affects each individual, the team and those around the. The final chapter looks more to the future and contains a reunion of some characters and some resolution with others. I really hope that it lives up to the hype :)

Finally credits: Arress is beta-ing this story once again and big thank-you for her help and suggestions. FYI the TKO line is all down to her, that little gem went over my head. Oh and as per normal, all mistakes are my bad.

This chapter contains an attempt to try to tie up some story lines that were never resolved (at least in my mind lol) in the episodes Knockout and Enemies Domestic and even seemed to contradict each other. Let me know what you think!

What a Difference a Year Makes: 8760 Little Hours

Prologue

NCIS Director Leon Vance: 12 months later

Director Leon Vance stood on the mezzanine level looking down on the bull pen, watching the MCRT as he contemplated the last 12 months. His premier investigative team was imploding and he felt powerless to arrest the decline. It was as if he was a helpless passenger on a runaway train and there was nothing he could do to stop it crashing. Part of him had known that not forcing Gibbs into retirement last year after the Rixon Wells debacle was going to come back to bite him on the butt, yet he really didn't have a lot of choice.

After all, it had been pointed out to him so eloquently, _people who lived in glass houses or had their own dirty little secrets shouldn't throw stones. _That oh so helpful pearl of wisdom had been offered to him courtesy of Supervisory Special Agent Gibbs when he'd suggested on behalf of SecNav, that maybe it would be better for all concerned, if Jethro being compromised, followed DiNozzo's example and resigned or rather took early retirement. For the good of NCIS, Leon had hastened to add. When Gibbs refused, Leon had made a veiled reference to how Special Agent Macy had been asking after him, knowing that Gibbs would realise that his Hernandez vendetta wasn't so secret as he would like.

Which Leon decided in hindsight, probably wasn't the smoothest of moves, especially taking into consideration Gibbs' reputation as a ruthless SOB. Challenging him had resulted in him coming out swinging as Gibbs retaliated with a metaphoric, yet none the less deadly, upper cut to the jaw and Vance realized that McCallister or Sharp, damn their souls, must have passed on his identity problem to Gibbs. And essentially it left the two alpha males at an impasse, warily circling around each other, but neither of them willing to make the first move. They both had too much to lose.

Of course Gibbs was right about one thing. Having a secret as huge as Leon did, made for one paranoid director, but then again, what could he do? What's done was done, there was no going back and he'd been paying a high price for his mistake. Not the least of which was being laid open to extortion in some form or another, ever since. Thirty years was a long time to serve for his crime and there was no indication that he would face a reprieve any time soon.

Leon still couldn't be sure if or how Gibbs knew that he and his boyhood friend, the original Leon Vance, had switched identities so that his friend assumed his identity to become Tyler Keith Owens and he adopted Leon's identity. Looking back, it had been dumb… actually, it had been incredibly dumb, but they were eighteen years old when they had first embarked on the dangerously and ultimately slippery slope that ended up with them switching lives. Who didn't have regrets about mistakes made in the past, especially at that age, after all? Unfortunately, neither boy could have foreseen the implications of the idiotic attempt to cheat the system.

Leon Vance was his best friend and they'd both grown up dirt poor and desperate. Desperate to do almost anything to get out of the ghetto, convinced that boxing was going to be their meal ticket and ultimate salvation. Then Leon met a retired Marine Colonel who became his mentor and inspired him to apply to enter the Marine Corps and the Colonel had even pulled some strings to have him attend the Naval Academy. The only obstacle to Leon achieving his dream was that he was extremely weak in mathematics and he pleaded with Tyler to help him to gain admission.

Although he (Tyler) assumed at first that his friend Leon wanted him to tutor him in Math, it turned out that Leon wanted him to sit the exam for him. As luck would have it, or not as it turned out, Tyler Owen and Leon Vance had an uncanny resemblance and were often mistaken for brothers when they were together. When they were apart, people who didn't know them really well would often confuse them for each other. So it wasn't such a stretch to see how Leon had come up with his scheme and at the time it seemed so harmless. So he helped his best friend to gain admission to the Naval Academy. He (Tyler) was brilliant in mathematics and although he was careful to not completely ace the entrance exam, he was happy to help Leon, who he regarded as a brother. It seemed like such a small thing, but one that could change Leon's life forever.

And seeing how happy his friend was when he was accepted into USNC, his sense of purpose and his pride in himself, Tyler was more than happy with his own decision to help his best friend. Although he missed Leon when he left Chicago, Tyler knew that Leon would achieve great things. In fact Leon's success inspired Tyler and he began to dream. He started to question that maybe his plan of pulling himself up out of the gutter as a professional boxer might not be as easy or smart as it sounded, as he'd first thought. He even started writing away for information about college admissions and scholarships.

Then disaster struck when Leon detached his retina in a boxing bout after he sustained a blow to his head. When he found out that he wouldn't meet the physical requirements to serve as an officer in the Marines, he was devastated and decided to leave the Academy. Tyler told him he was crazy and tried to convince him that even if he couldn't serve in the Corps, there were plenty of other ways to serve his country that would honour his mentor.

Yet Leon was shattered and obdurate. When Tyler got angry and yelled at him not to be an idiot and throw away his unbelievable opportunity, Leon had replied that if he felt so strongly then they should swap identities and lives. He even argued that if it hadn't been for Tyler, he would have never passed the entrance requirements in the first place. He even joked that since he was going to chase his dream of becoming a professional fighter the name Tyler Keith Owens was much more appropriate one for a boxer. When Tyler had looked at him, confused he'd smirked before explaining, "Your initials Teek, they spell TKO."

The temptation was too much for the director and he agreed to the swap. They figured that with the time off that the real Leon had needed after the surgery, given their physical resemblance to each other and their love of boxing that it would be fairly easy to pull off the substitution. Tyler Owens would become Leon Vance and when he returned to USNA he would maximize the chances that the switch wouldn't be detected by switching divisions and subjects. Leon had enrolled in Division I - Engineering and Weapons, but Tyler decided to swap to Division II which was the Mathematics and Science division. It would make their ruse much more difficult to detect for one thing. Apart from that, he was interested in computer sciences and knew that if he graduated, the world would be his oyster. Once at USNA the fake Leon Vance previously known as Tyler Owens thrived.

So it was ironic that his success was what had attracted the attention of the intelligence community and in particular, NIS Special Agents McAllister and Sharp, who had ferreted out his secret, seemingly as easy as shelling peas, and blackmailed him into a suicide mission. Not that he'd known it was a suicide mission at the time, of course. No, they'd preyed on his vanity about his computer and analytical skills, appealing to his sense of patriotism, with some not so subtle coercion thrown in. But for one renegade Mossad agent named Eli David, he would have died in Amsterdam, but even as he climbed the ranks of the agency, Leon Vance knew that people like McAllister and Sharp knew what he had done and could and did use it against him.

At the time, he'd never really stopped to think that what he and the real Leon Vance had done was serious fraud but in the years since that irrevocable decision, he'd had plenty of time to consider the ramifications of their hasty act. Apart from the fact that it could land him in prison, it also meant that he had to deny his sister Tara since the real Leon Vance was on only child. Although he kept in periodic contact with Tara Cole, his sister, using the cover story that he was an old boyfriend, which was downright creepy, he had foregone any legal claim to a relationship with her. As he grew older, he realised what he'd given up. Or in the case of his son and daughter, what he'd deprived them of, not to mention the price he'd asked his sister to pay, too.

While Gibbs never actually threatened to expose his secret in so many words, Vance had long heard the rumours that did the rounds that one didn't cross Leroy Jethro Gibbs because he knew where all the bodies were buried. Another rumour that was whispered in certain rarified circles was that the reason why Gibbs had no desire to become director of the agency, despite being seen by many as a megalomaniac, or at the least possessing a messianic personality complex, was that he was already the real power behind the throne. The scuttlebutt was that Directors did his bidding and took care of all the mundane bureaucratic tasks and politicking that he had no stomach for because he knew way too much and was too implacable an enemy to cross.

While Leon wouldn't go as far as to agree with that assessment, he would admit that there were times when he permitted Gibbs way more latitude than he would have if he hadn't been masquerading as someone else. Secrets did make one vulnerable. Of course, the way that SecNav had reversed his call for Gibbs to stand down after the trial suggested that perhaps he had a skeleton or two in his own closet, and so they had found themselves in an uncomfortable stalemate.

Finally, SecNav had stipulated that Gibbs would remain as the team lead of the Major Case Response Team, but under some stringent stipulations. Gibbs was required to hereon in: Observe all NCIS protocols and procedures, even those that were in direct contravention of his personal rules (both written and unwritten), he was no longer permitted to interview witnesses or interrogate suspects unless he had another NCIS agent present (not a liaison officer) in order to be able to provide independent corroboration and to serve as the primary witness in any court or legal proceedings and that for any high profile cases that went to trial, he would be placed on special assignment to excuse him from having to testify and placing the agency in a vulnerable situation.

Leon had thought that having Special Agent Timothy McGee promoted as the new senior special agent would be a good thing, too. DiNozzo had been too much of a cowboy, not to mention a sycophant, to Gibbs' alpha personality, but Tim would be a sobering influence, he was sure, since he was highly intelligent and by the book. Well, so Leon had believed, but he now realized that when it came to Anthony DiNozzo, he had been blinded by his own dislike and bigoted opinion of the former agent. He had been wrong and now he could see just how much of a moderating effect he had had on his teammates and how after he left, it all began to fall apart.

And what Leon hadn't seen coming was that DiNozzo's departure would affect the de facto members of team Gibbs either. He was shocked when Dr. Mallard handed in his own resignation. Although clearly it was something that was going to happen at some point in the future, he wasn't prepared for it just yet. He knew that the elderly M.E. had intended to retire when Palmer had finished his final exams and had a few years under his belt, but the whole mess with the court case had precipitated an early retirement. Then Palmer handed in his resignation, too, and the loss of the man that had been groomed to take Dr. Mallard's place as M.E. was a further unexpected blow. He had been Mallard's protégé for over six years, and to lose both of them had left a huge vacuum within the agency.

What Leon hadn't really realized until they'd departed was that when it came to Gibbs, Dr. Mallard, DiNozzo, and Abby Sciuto all acted as a buffer and a tempering force for the man's anger and stubbornness, as no one else seemed capable of controlling him. Now Scuito was left to man the bulwark, and it seemed that on her own she wasn't able to contain the man like she had in the past. Of course, she also seemed to be struggling in the wake of the fallout from the damn Rixon Wells case and the resignations of DiNozzo et al. The life seemed to have gone out of the once exuberant forensic scientist, who now seemed flat, almost reserved, by comparison.

In many subtle ways that continued to shock him, since they weren't related to the MCRT as such, things had changed within the agency, and not for the better. He was shocked when the pencil pushers drew to his attention that many of the other teams suffered a small yet statistically significant decline in closure rates. This was attributed by team leaders as being due to what they identified as 'The DiNozzo Factor' no longer being available to consult informally with the other teams when they hit a brick wall in an investigation. It seemed it was quite common for other teams to run cases by him to get his unique outside the box opinion on evidence which often resulted in new leads and results being generated.

While the actual percentage decline was only a 1.08 per cent and didn't sound like anything noteworthy, to the bureaucrats that argued about annual budget appropriations every day, it was a big deal. A huge deal in fact! According to the pencil pushers, such a statistical anomaly could easily translate into millions of dollars being diverted to other agencies annually.

Then there was the equally surprising fact that DiNozzo had acted as a de-facto consultant to the younger field agents, and sometimes some not so young agents, on all things to do with undercover work. It included helping them to cope with the difficult aftermath of shedding an undercover persona. Without him around, tempers were fraying and injuries were up as agents used alcohol as their main coping mechanism. Clearly his practical jokes had served a much deeper purpose than he'd realized.

Frankly, in hindsight, he couldn't understand how the former agent worked as SFA for the hard-nosed former Marine on the MCRT with a phenomenal close out rate, offered support to the other teams, and managed to be such a playboy. And that's when the realty hit him; that Tony hadn't just been their best undercover agent, but he'd been undercover in the bull pen, and Vance had been taken in by a master of deception. Clearly the irresponsible, juvenile skirt chaser had been just another act, and he'd fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker, never bothering to question why he was so universally liked and admired by so many of his colleagues. It seemed that everyone, bar those closest to him, had been able to see his worth, and that didn't say a lot for them and their so called superior skills.

How could he be that blind as to underestimate DiNozzo so badly? It was deeply embarrassing, and his loss had been felt in so many little ways that Leon simply couldn't have imagined. If he had, he would have fought tooth and nail to have kept him in the agency. Another example which surprised him was that HR reported a significant increase in complaints leveled against MCRT members, and while complaints had primarily been made against Gibbs, David and McGee had copped their fair share, too.

Tensions were running high within the team it seemed and they were taking out their frustrations on everyone else. Even the janitorial staff members weren't immune and were giving them a wide berth, complaining about their treatment. They were refusing to clean their workspace if the team was working in the bull pen. In fact, there had also been a small, but again statistically significant overall increase in stress leave that the HR manager had felt was linked to DiNozzo's departure. The HR staff had theorized that the absence of what Leon Vance had regarded as Tony's inappropriate humour and those damned practical jokes again, had apparently been aiding overall office morale, especially when tough cases made everyone stressed.

If he had still been available, Leon would have groveled and begged him to return as a civilian consultant to the agency, but DiNozzo, as far as he could tell, was rarely in the country these days. The happy-go-lucky former agent seemed to have fallen on his feet and found a new career, literally overnight. He was making a name for himself in Hollywood these days and seemed to have beautiful women falling over themselves to been seen with him. It seemed as if every single time he sat down to watch the television DiNozzo, aka Anthony Paddington, was there, his million dollar smile taunting Leon, as if he was laughing his ass off at him. Kayla and Jarrod were pestering him to get them an autograph, and to add insult to injury, even Jackie had hinted that they should invite DiNozzo around for dinner the next time he was in DC.

Meanwhile, looking at the shambles that was left of his best team, he wondered how it had all gone bad so quickly; or why he'd thought that Gibbs would follow the rules. Or if it came down to it, why McGee would be able to do a better job as the team's senior field agent when in truth, he couldn't begin to live up to the standards that DiNozzo had set. And he wondered what he was going to do since he was in a no win situation. It seemed that he had no choice but to admit to the fraud that he had committed all those years ago, and he wondered how Jackie and his children would ever forgive him for turning their whole existence upside down.

If only he could turn back the clock, go back to when he had first parked his ass in the big chair. Instead of sending DiNozzo off as an agent afloat, he should have given him his own team. It wouldn't have stopped the MCRT self-destructing, but at least the agency would still have a valuable asset and great new team, along with the fringe benefits that he'd never realized that Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo brought to his job and the agency.

Momentarily, he fantasized about taking SecNav's Gulf Stream and tracking Tony DiNozzo down wherever he happened to be now and getting down on his knees and begging him to come back. Realistically, he knew that the reasons why the agent resigned still existed, and even if there was some way to mitigate them, the man was making more money in a week than he'd made in a year when he'd been a federal agent. Why would anyone throw all that away and return to being a badly paid law enforcement professional?

No, Anthony DiNozzo wasn't about to come riding to his rescue on a white charger to save Leon Vance's sorry ass. He was going to be well and truly exposed to the whole world as a sham before he ended up in prison, if he forced Gibbs to retire. The alternative was that he continued to let him ride roughshod over him, and the Secretary of Defense would inevitably step in and fire Vance for his incompetent agency and failure to act in its best interests.

What a choice. Maybe he should simply retire and take a job working in the corporate sector. At least that way he could safeguard his family. His dreams of a career in politics had gone up in flames, but at least he would save his sorry butt, which also meant his marriage could survive, too, and he would still retain the respect of Kayla and Jarrod.

Next chapter up: McGee reflects upon the changes they have occurred during the last 12 months.


	2. Chapter 2

Rating: T

Disclaimer: None of the characters from NCIS belong to me and this story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Chapter Warning: If you are a die-hard Tim McGee fan then my recommendation would be to skip reading this chapter in its entirety because I can pretty much guarantee that it will offend you and elevate your blood pressure. Proceed at your own risk!

Warnings: While parts of this chapter may appear to be taken directly from events that have occurred in the last couple of months I would like to point out that the first draft of this chapter was written at least five months ago (as my beta Arress can verify since I sent her the rough draft to read.) This story was supposed to be a little tongue-in-cheek so I was extremely disturbed when the parallels between RL and my imagination started to emerge.

To the guest reviewer txgal who wanted to know what my intentions were and if I expected them to feel sorry for Leon Vance et al, I'd say IMHO that Leon was already feeling sorry enough for himself, so no, not at all. LOL His purpose was merely to provide an overview of how Tony leaving affected the team and the agency while subsequent chapters will be more focused on how it affects each individual. And also to explain why after having his integrity shredded by Jefferies in my last story and in the show in general (think season 10 & 11) avoids any consequences for his behaviour and appears to be a law unto himself. And he seems to wield much more power and influence than his position as a SSA would warrant i.e, standing in for the Director instead of the Assistant Director assuming power. And for people wondering about Jimmy, your patience will be rewarded towards then end when I'll reveal what he's been up to.

Finally credits: Arress is beta-ing this story once again and big thank-you for her help and suggestions. FYI who knew that spat the dummy was an Aussie idiom but's that's what Beta's are for lol. Oh and as per normal, all mistakes are my bad.

What a Difference a Day Makes: 8760 Little Hours

Chapter 2

Special Agent Timothy McGee, Junior Field Agent MCRT

Special Agent McGee slipped the key into his lock and sighed with relief to be home at last. Toeing off his shoes and shucking his coat and hanging it up in the cupboard, he wondered if he should order takeout or if there was something he could throw together for dinner. He was exhausted and looking forward to chilling out for a few hours as the Elf Lord before having a deep and meaningful relationship with his bed.

Today, like most days lately, had been like something out of Dante's inferno and he dreaded having to go into work. He had definitely descended to the ninth circle of Hell. The NCIS agent was giving serious consideration to asking for a transfer or better yet, retiring, so he could write full time. He had hardly any time to write anymore and even if he did, lately he seemed to have an almost permanent case of writers block. Wandering into the kitchen he grabbed a cold beer out of his fridge and took a deep swallow, letting the iced brew dance across his parched throat with a groan of relief.

Noting that the fridge was barer than Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard, he decided that Thai takeout looked to be the go. _Note to self – need to find time to do grocery shopping._ And therein lay the rub! It seemed that Gibbs was barely giving them time to hit the head these days, let alone give them time off to deal with mundane matters like eating and sleeping. Sometimes he was convinced that Gibbs forgot that not everybody was a cyborg like him.

Wandering back in to the living area to peruse the mail, he found a letter from his publisher and he grinned. He had been wondering when his latest contract for his new book would arrive for him to sign. Maybe he should talk to Director Vance tomorrow and see if he could make a counter offer to persuade him to stay on as an agent. After all, his cyber hacking skills were second to none and they could hardly afford to lose him. Ripping the envelope, he took out the letter and started reading eagerly.

Mr. T. McGee AKA Thom E. Gemcity

Dear Mr. McGee,

Re: Your book series Deep Six and contractual issues.

Further to our various telephone conversations on the subject of your latest book, this letter is to formally advise you that we will not be picking up the option on your latest book '_Unfathomable Eleven'_ following the lack of interest in your previous book in the Deep Six series '_Subterranean Ten'_. After exhaustive market research, including numerous focus groups, we have determined that your precipitous killing off of the extremely popular character Agent Tommy in your earlier book in the series _"Never-Ending Nine'_ was deeply unpopular to your readership. It has had the extremely unfortunate consequence that they have refused to read subsequent books because he is no longer in them.

Contrary to your assertion that Agent Tommy's sole purpose was that of comic relief and served to highlight the proficiency of the other members of the team, apparently he was seen by many readers as their favourite character and pivotal to the success of the books. Market research also revealed that he was viewed as possessing much greater complexity than you perceived or perhaps intended when you created him and readers felt that he was merely hiding behind the face of a clown. Whatever your intent, it seems he has become a much loved character and as such, people are reluctant to purchase future books in the Deep Six series when he is no longer present.

So after serious consideration of these factors, it was decided that we would not produce further books in this series. I'm sure that you can understand that while this was a difficult decision, it is a purely commercial determination, based purely upon projected sales which at this point in time, would not justify our expense in producing further books.

Furthermore, after giving due consideration to your other book proposals, we have decided not to proceed with them either. Unfortunately at this point of time, due to the current controversy, your literary profile is not one that we can afford to be associated with currently. We encourage you, however, to continue to submit new proposals should you have any and would definitely look favorably on a proposal that had Agent Tommy in it. Perhaps you would consider writing a stand-alone book dealing with Detective Tommy's earlier exploits as a cop when he worked in Peoria, Philadelphia or Baltimore – all of which would be excellent settings for a novel. Alternatively, a book that details how he met Special Agent L. J. Tibbs and how they came to work together, prior to Agent McGregor and Officer Lisa joining the team would be something we would be keen to consider. Our research indicates that either of these books could be a best seller as these two characters are highly popular.

Two other stories were identified as having sound commercial merit with regard to attracting back your former readers and were also centered upon the relationship between Agent Tommy and L .J. Tibbs: One where they have concealed a long-lost father and son connection from everyone, and the second, where they were in a monogamous loving but secret relationship. We hope that you will consider developing one of these Agent Tommy-centric story lines into a book. Meanwhile, we wish you every success in your future literary endeavors.

Yours Faithfully,

Lyndi Crawshaw

After reading the letter which was effectively a publisher's 'don't call us we'll call you' missive, he picked up his half full bottle of beer and flung it at the opposite wall of his apartment in a fit of anger. Goddamn DiNozzo, he'd been the bane of his existence even before he'd joined the MCRT full-time and even now, a year after him resigning from NCIS just because of a stupid joke, he was still ruining Tim's life. He hated the stupid guy and now he had ruined his book deal, too. The guy was a narcissistic buffoon, how the hell could people prefer dumb-as-a-rock, frat boy Agent Tommy over messianic and lethal Agent Tibbs, sexy, dangerous Officer Lisa or the super smart computer savvy Agent McGregor? Obviously, they must also all be dumb as rocks, too, and he so wished that he didn't have to think about Tony DiNozzo anymore.

It had been a year since Tony DiNozzo had gone all diva on them and left because they had been joking about his narcissistic personality behind his back. Why would anyone feed that enormous ego of his by giving him the satisfaction of knowing they were talking about him to his face, anyway? When the perpetual frat boy found out about it he'd thrown a hissy fit, caused a big fracas that had them all fighting amongst themselves and left them high and dry.

Sure, he'd tried to convince everyone that he resigned because the team had ruined his precious reputation, but hey, it wasn't as if people had any respect for him anyway. He was a joke, the class clown! Vance had made it very plain that if it came down to a choice between the two agents, McGee was the type of agent where the future of the agency lay. Super smart and able to investigate crime using new digital techniques as opposed to the more labour intensive old-fashioned cop methods favoured by DiNozzo.

McGee remembered the final time that he'd spoken to Tony DiNozzo when he came to NCIS to tender his resignation and he took his leave of the team. Before he took off to go show just how shallow and narcissistic he truly was, he had shown his true colours as a prima donna, breezing in and refusing to discuss the situation like a rational adult.

Flashback

McGee was filling out paperwork - requisition forms for office supplies which were Tony's responsibility, but he was on a week leave and Gibbs had tossed him a boatload of paperwork. He didn't dare complain since Gibbs was in the foulest temper that McGee could ever recall and that was really saying something. He remembered filling out this particular form before, but a lot of the forms were new to him, so he figured that they must have been newly implemented since he had been the team SFA when Gibbs reti… was on sick leave._ Note to self - don't mention Gibbs' retirement; in fact, don't even think about Gibbs' retirement since it was a sure fire way of earning a head slap. A hysterical bubble of incipient giggles tried to break the surface as he remembered the classic line 'Don't mention the war' from a definitive English comedy Fawlty Towers that he'd watched as a child with his Grandmother Penny. Sometimes he felt like the concussed Basil Fawlty around Gibbs, trying desperately not the mention the war and failing miserably._

There was a buzz around the bull pen since Tony had come in earlier and gone up to see Director Leon Vance, even though he was still on a week of unpaid leave. He'd heard the scuttlebutt that their SFA was inconsolable after they lost a slam dunk of a case against Lt. Rixon Wells because his legal counsel had gone after Gibbs and Tony to destroy their credibility. Truth be told, Tony had made no bones of the fact that he blamed the team for shafting him, claiming they hadn't observed Rule #1, but McGee couldn't see how any of them could foresee that a harmless joke about his narcissism would be twisted around by the defense attorney. There was no way to know unless you were psychic, and unlike Abby, he didn't believe in that crap.

Finally, he looked up aware that the hum of conjecture had ceased and the reason for that was soon apparent. Tony was stalking across the walkway on the mezzanine level towards the stairs, his eyes icy and his expression unlike any that Tim had ever seen on DiNozzo. The author in him had to admit that this Tony exuded power and menace in equal proportions and McGee had to concede that he was scary… no, he was _crap your pants scary,_ and he was now heading for his desk. Ignoring his teammates, he sat down and booted up his computer, fired off something at a speed that was unlike his usual one-fingered typing before shutting down his computer and collecting the document from the printer. As he returned to his desk, Ziva, who didn't like being ignored sidled up to him and purred.

"So, Tony, you are coming back from leave early, yes? We can put aside this foolishness and scrabbling. This was just a misunderstanding, but we can get back to what we do best?" She questioned, although he remained silent.

"You could come to my apartment and I could cook you dinner, Tony?" She tried again to illicit a response from him. Still he remained silent.

"If you behave yourself you might just get desert," She tried to flirt, but McGee thought it was hard to flirt when the subject was implacable as a brick wall.

Ignoring her, Tony picked up a pen and signed the printed document and walked over and dropped it on Gibbs' desk before heading back to his desk and putting several items into his back pack, throwing other possessions into the trash and pulling out a box from his filing cabinet and assembling it. By now it was abundantly clear to all that Tony was cleaning out his desk. Stealing a glance at Gibbs, who looked like he was about to combust, McGee felt like they were all headed towards an abyss and there was nothing that could stop them plunging into the dark, bleak maw. It was like watching a train wreck, but he just couldn't look away.

And then all hell broke loose. Ziva, who hated to be treated as if she was irrelevant, decided it was a good idea to playfully slap Tony on the back of the head to force a response out of him. Tim thought it was clearly inappropriate behaviour, but Ziva was not the most socially perceptive of individuals. Millimetres before her hand made contact with his skull though, Tony struck out like viper, grabbing her hand in an iron grip and addressed her in a coldly furious tone.

"I told you once before that you don't get to head slap me, Officer David. You're lucky that I don't bring you up on assault charges."

Ziva snorted, "Do not be a mule, Tony. It is a joke, you out of everyone should understand about jokes, yes?"

"No, frankly I don't Ms. David. I don't understand jokes that can ruin a teammate's credibility or their livelihood, but more importantly, that allows a killer to walk free. I don't understand how my teammates can complain about me to perfect strangers who are looking for ways to discredit my character. Nor do I understand how someone whose six I've had for the last eight years would ever find it appropriate to liken me to a cold-blooded serial killer. Just goes to show that you never really know someone." Tony turned on his heel, missing or just not caring that Gibbs' eyes had dilated dangerously as his fury escalated.

Tim decided to step in to say what Gibbs and Ziva never would. "Look, Tony, I know that you're sore about the trial, but none of us ever imagined that a joke would backfire like that. We're just as upset about Lieutenant Wells getting off as you are."

Without stopping the packing up of his desk or looking up, Tony responded. "So, what you're saying is, McGee, that for the last however many years you've been joking behind my back about me having a personality disorder that you don't really think I'm a narcissist? That you were just kidding?"

Taking a few seconds to respond to the enquiry, Tony gave a cynical laugh that was so cold that it could freeze molten lava, before the former cop interjected just as Tim was about to speak. "Yeah, that's what I thought, Special Agent McGee. I'll refrain from any cheap and obvious retorts about narcissism and Agent McGregor."

Ziva chimed in again. "You are making a fountain out of molehill, Tony. I will take care of this Jefferies… this Richard-cranium. We are a team and we have your back."

Finishing clearing his desk, he looked up outraged at her last statement. "Not as of 15 minutes ago we're not, Officer David, and you've got to be freakin' joking, right? If this is having my back then I'd hate to imagine what it would feel like if you didn't give a damn!"

McGee felt a frisson of dread at his response. "What do you mean, not as of 15 minutes ago, Tony?" He noticed that not only was everybody listening in to the exchange intently, but Special Agent Balboa had come to stand near Tony's workspace.

"I mean that I'm no longer a part of your team because I don't work for the agency anymore, Special Agent McGee. Director Vance accepted my resignation, effective immediately."

Gibbs finally found his voice. Picking up the letter of resignation that Tony dropped on his desk, he ripped it up and threw it in the trash. "Your ass is mine, DiNozzo and you don't have my permission to resign. You don't leave til I say you can."

Tony shook his head and exchanged glances with Balboa. "And I'm supposed to be the narcissist?" he commented to the onlookers. "My ass along with every other part of my anatomy is mine for the first time in eight years, Leroy, and I've gotta say it feels damned good, too. You're free to withhold your permission, but you can't stop me resigning. Leon is already in his office doing the happy dance as we speak all the while drying the ink on the promotion of his golden boy McGee to SFA."

Balboa tapped Tony on the shoulder to get his attention. "Are you sure you want to do this, man? You don't have to leave the agency. I would kill to have you on my team and all the other SSAs feel the same, although frankly it's a serious waste of your skills to be just a SFA, but none of us want to lose you."

Tony smiled briefly at Balboa and nodded his thanks to the other SSAs who were standing around the bull pen, nodding their agreement. "Thanks Rocky and everyone, but I can't stay here. My ability to perform my job has been compromised along with my credibility. I don't HAVE a choice!"

"Wait, Tony, you do not want leave on bad terms. We are your family and you will regret your fierce words. Let us talk about it."

Tony glared at his former teammates. "Actually Officer David, yes, I do. If we're family and that's how you treat family, then I disown you, forthwith. And absolutely no regrets, not anymore. Finally, not one chance in Hell, lady!"

He picked up his box and Balboa picked up the former senior field agent's backpack.

"C'mon, Tony, I'll walk you out."

As Tony waved goodbye to the throng that had gathered before walking away towards the elevator, one of the Senior Special Agents proceeded to send him off with a round of applause. Everyone, bar the MCRT, who were standing looking dumbfounded, rapidly joined in. The clapping soon turned to cheering and finally escalated to stomping which prompted Leon Vance to come running out to see what had caused such riotous behavior from his troops. As he hung over the mezzanine level gawping, he was greeted with the astonishing and highly galling sight of the former Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo being given a farewell like a triumphant hero.

End of Flashback

Timothy McGee grimaced at the memory. As Tony had predicted before his departure, McGee finally got his chance to shine after Tony resigned and he was appointed Senior Field Agent. Although frustratingly, DiNozzo was still there in spirit, screwing up his life even if he'd moved on to greener pastures, screwing him in more ways than one!

After Tony deserted the team, McGee had decided to kill off Agent Tommy in his latest novel since he was no longer a part of their team and, in all honesty, Tim had found it seriously cathartic to be able to get rid of him. He'd made it a three-tissue job and the chapter when the team avenged their 'none-too-bright but loved him despite his flaws' teammate, Agent Tommy, by catching his killer was a literary masterpiece, even if he did say so himself.

After writing it, he wondered why the hell he hadn't done it years ago. When the book hit the shelves, he was expecting that his standing as a novelist would rise markedly. No longer would he be regarded as just a popular crime writer. Expecting to receive plaudits as a serious novelist at last, he had been shocked and appalled at the reception that he had received. He'd started getting hate mail protesting his killing off of their 'favourite' character in the thousands. Then there'd been all the book burning ceremonies at various venues to protest over the killing off of Agent Tommy.

Suddenly, the Deep Six characters were spawning gazillions of fan fictions for heaven's sake, all rewriting his latest book so that Agent Tommy didn't die, was really undercover, abducted by aliens who placed post hypnotic suggestions in the team to make them believe he was dead or other equally ridiculous situations. The scenarios were becoming increasingly bizarre and were driving him to distraction and into a permanent state of hangover.

Meanwhile, his publicist and publisher demanded that he fix the mess in his next Deep Six book ASAP. So he'd been trying to get the next book out as quickly as possible to appease all his fans and stop the rash of vampire Tommy stories that were the latest incarnation of Deep Six fan fictions that were currently all the rage. And he'd been really confident that he'd come up with the perfect remedy to reinvent his series sans Agent Tommy.

After lurking round the various fan fiction sites, McGee thought he knew what it was that the fans wanted. One of the largest communities was one dedicated to TISA, i.e., Tommy plus Lisa and their kids and after reading the various stories he'd been inspired. Tim set to writing furiously, even though it was difficult because Gibbs was being impossible, more so than ever before. Gibbs was a bastard even when he got out of bed on the right side in the morning, but lately, thanks to Tony's betrayal, he'd been ten times worse than normal.

Tim's head was permanently aching from all the head slaps he had to endure. He'd always thought it was funny when the boss did it to DiNozzo, but he didn't find it so funny now when he was the constant focus of Gibbs' head slaps; Hell, call a spade a spade, his assaults. Gibbs was stomping around, roaring, yelling, throwing stationary, even a computer monitor or three, and destroyed twice as many cell phones as usual. And everyone was complaining to him and expecting him to handle Gibbs' moods and calm him down. _After all, Tony always could!_

More unpalatable than all of that though, was every time Tim made a mistake, and hell he was still learning to do the job thank-you-very-much, or Heaven forbid he didn't anticipate or he didn't do it quickly enough or he didn't do something that he was supposed to do but hadn't actually been aware of, Gibbs would snarl the same hurtful epithets that were slowly destroying his confidence. "… DiNozzo wouldn't make a mistake like that…. DiNozzo didn't do it that way….You're not DiNozzo are ya Elflord… I never had to explain it to DiNozzo; he did it without being told…" If he heard one more comparison to DiNozzo out of Tibbs', um Gibbs', mouth he was gonna lose it and freakin' well punch the boss right in his sarcastic mouth.

And Ziva didn't make his life any easier, either. She thought she should have gotten Tony's old job as SFA, which was just ridiculous as she wasn't even an NCIS agent, but she had made his life a living Hell. She was always making snide comments about his inferior skills in hand-to-hand combat and firearms proficiency. She would question any orders he gave her, especially when Gibbs wasn't around to witness the insubordination, and would boss him around and intimidate him. The Mossad officer was constantly trying to one-up him, not just in the field when she went to great pains to point out her superior fitness skills. Ziva wasn't his partner and watching his six anymore, since she was Hell-bent on showing up all his deficiencies and proving why she should be SFA, not him.

With so many pressures on the job and not being able to sleep when he finally went home at night, he took to the writing of his latest book as therapy, confident at least that he now knew how to rejuvenate his Deep Six series. If all else failed and he ended up shooting Ziva and thumping the Boss in the mouth, at least he had a second career to fall back on. Thom E. Gemcity could provide him with a more than adequate income, especially if he had more time to do self-promotional tours. Soon, he was immersed in the new adventures of LIBBS and McAMY and their hot steamy love affairs and pregnancies. Just for good measure, he had McGregor and Tibbs engage in a steamy but short-lived BDSM relationship where Agent McGregor forced Tibbs to acknowledge that his bastard personality was because he hadn't embraced his sub nature. McGregor taught him how to submit before realizing that it was Amy who he was destined to be with and kicked Tibbs out of his bed.

He also gave Pimmy Jalmer a torrid love affair with the Eurasian legal officer Rochelle Chee, and when it was all done and dusted, he was debating if he should give McGregor a team of his own since he was rapidly getting fed up with his current one. The fact that their closure rate had steadily declined after DiNozzo had left, made him hope that the Director might decide it was time to hand the leadership of the MCRT over to a younger, more competent agent. One with more skills in keeping with the digital age, and he did already have experience leading a team in cyber-crimes.

Either way, Supervisory Special Agent of the Major Case Response Team or celebrated author, Thom E. Gemcity; it would be a good life and he was excited about his newest book coming out. He was confident he had hit all the popular angles with fans that would resurrect his book series again and make it more successful than ever. Yet two weeks after the launch of Subterranean Ten, sales figures were stagnant, critics were panning all the shipping of the main characters, including the McTibbs ship, before starting in on the statistical improbability of dual pregnancies of the only two female characters. The hate mail that had all but slackened off after Agent Tommy had bought the farm in the last book, picked up again with a vengeance. Apparently, the Tisa shippers were outraged that he'd shipped Tibbs and Lisa and got her pregnant, and this time they weren't simply content with burning his books.

He couldn't believe how fanatical, and yes some of them were unhinged even, these shippers were. There were death threats, and even as a federal agent he feared for his safety with some of these whack jobs that appeared to have a very tenuous grip on reality. They formed militant picket lines at any place where he attempted to publicize the book, such as when he attempted to do the talk show circuit and talk-back radio.

He was being constantly stalked. His car was egged on countess occasions and he had rotten fruit chucked at him routinely, which was bad enough, but some of the fruit was canned. The combined pressure of his two professions simply became intolerable. Between his boss, who was behaving like a feral maniac, and the rabid harpies who called themselves Tisa shippers, he was between a rock and a hard place.

He wasn't eating or sleeping and started having panic attacks, but when he suffered a psychotic break convinced that Bert's farts were really a derivative of Klingon and a portent to the end of the world, he was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Bethesda for ten days of observation. Upon discharge, he was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder complicated by exhaustion and stress and placed on medication and his doctor, in consultation with the Director and Gibbs, deemed it advisable to recommend a less stressful working environment. He was demoted from his position as SFA, and because he was still within the probationary period, he had no recourse to fight it. So there he was, back as the junior agent on the team again, and didn't Ziva love that, although she wasn't so smug when Leon Vance appointed an outsider as the new SFA.

So, as he regarded his future now that his publisher had cut ties with him, he had to admit that it was looking bleak. Basically his life was screwed. He lost his writing career, and he'd been twice demoted from Senior Field Agent, which wouldn't look too good on his personnel file, and he doubted if he would be in the running for the directorship after this demotion and developing a mental illness. Basically, if Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo wasn't such a princess, his life wouldn't be such a shambles. Why couldn't Tony just put the needs of the team before his own for once?

They needed him to stop them falling apart and he was off swanning around as some superficial movie star. How much more proof did anyone need anyway? Narcissistic not!

Eyeing another unopened letter that Tim recognised as being from his literary agent, he almost didn't open it. He figured that she was telling him that his contract was cancelled with the publisher or that she decided to drop him, too. Finally, he decided that it was better to just rip the band aid off the ouchy, so he seized the letter and tore it open. Instead of more rejection, his literary agent was informing him that she'd been approached by a party who was interested in securing the film rights to his Deep Six Series with the view to making a feature film sometime in the future.

Tim couldn't contain his relief or his excitement. And he couldn't help thinking about who might play him and the other characters: L. J. Tibbs was obvious, he should be played by Harrison Ford or Clint Eastwood, Officer Lisa should be played by Penelope Cruze or Selma Hayek (Angelina Jolie was too tall), and let's face it, there weren't any famous Israeli actresses, but audiences couldn't tell the difference between Spanish/Latino and Israeli. Agent Tommy was a no-brainer – either Adam Sandler or Jim Carey were the obvious choices, perhaps even Ben Stiller, and Agent McGregor should be played by Sam Worthington or possibly Daniel Craig or Matthew McConaughey.

McGee decided that perhaps his luck was starting to change after all. On balance, if this deal went through, he might just be able resign sooner rather than later. He would have it written into the contract that he act as a technical advisor and script consultant. It could be the start of a beautiful new friendship.

Maybe he'd call up his good buddy DiNozzo and see if he could introduce him to the power brokers in Hollywood.

Next chapter L.J. Tibbs oops my bad... Gibbs!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Warning: If you are a die-hard Leroy Jethro Gibbs fan then my recommendation would be to skip reading this chapter in its entirety because I can pretty much guarantee that it will offend you and elevate your blood pressure. Proceed at your own risk!

A/N Well I have to say thank-you so much for all the wonderful reviews and the support that people have shown in following this story. I love getting your reviews (well okay, I don't know any writer who doesn't it really feeds the motivation to write) but although most of this story was pretty much in draft stage already, your comment, questions and insights do sometimes pull me up and make me think, mmm fair point and I'll tweak things slightly to address questions you have, so keep them coming. Some of you have expressed the hope that we might get to see Tony in full blown spy mode. Probably not going to happen in this sequel... but I was already floating the idea that this incarnation of Tony (spy masquerading as a movie star) could form the basis of a series of stand alone fics if I can come up with plots that I like. I already have one story line in mind but am open to suggestions so feel free to suggest. :D No promises but hopefully I can come up with a few scenarios that fire up the imagination.

One finally question; someone wanted to know what happened to the money that he earned from movies. Currently, Tony is building up a cover-story and having to live a certain lifestyle to do so. As he builds up his profile, his bosses expect him to collect the typical entourage that big stars seem to travel around wit,h for local colour. They will expect him to finance those expenses and flashy lifestyle from his earnings so at this stage, the short answer is yes he gets to keep it. However, if he was to make the really big bucks, they may revisit funneling excessive monies into investing in Carter's reality TV company (i.e. back into the agency). In chapters 5 & 6 we get to see some of the ways he spends his pay cheque. Think that is it for now :)

Finally credits: Arress is beta-ing this story once again and big thank-you for her help and suggestions. FYI who knew that spat the dummy was an Aussie idiom but's that's what Beta's are for lol. Oh and as per normal, all mistakes are my bad.

What a Difference a Day Makes: 8760 Little Hours

Chapter 3

Senior Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs: One Year Later

Leroy Jethro Gibbs sighted his target and stilled his breathing, attempting to completely calm his elevated heart rate before firing, only to feel irritated beyond belief to see his last shot go wide. While he'd hit the mark, he'd been off by almost half a millimetre, which for anyone else who wasn't a sniper, a Marine and especially LJ Gibbs, wouldn't be a big drama, but he demanded perfection when it came to his sniping, hell he demanded perfection in everything and everyone. And the infuriating thing was he was here, trying his damnedest to relax because his team was driving him to drink, and according to his latest physical last week, his blood pressure for the first time ever was dangerously high. High enough that the quack wanted to start hypertensive medication, and when he'd refused to agree, the idiot had given him two weeks to lower it by alternate means or start treatment.

The jumped up little quack had told him if he refused to cooperate, he'd bench him from field work. So here he was, trying to have some R&R on the rifle range and lower his blood pressure. Yet because he was so tense due to the numb-nuts that called themselves his team, he was also too tense to fire his trusty rifle perfectly. Which in turn just made him more furious, which instead of relaxing him, was adding to his stress. At this rate he was going to have to resign himself to taking handfuls of medication everyday if he wanted to stay in the field. There was no way he was going to be chained to the desk, that was for damned sure!

Gibbs couldn't believe how much everything had changed in the last year. They had a new medical examiner because Ducky had retired from NCIS in a misguided case of self-indulgent guilt, directly after the unsuccessful prosecution of Lieutenant Rixon Wells. That was the case that had caused such a shit-storm about their harmless little joke 'bout DiNozzo which that weasel Jefferies made into a mountain instead of a molehill with his meddling and courtroom machinations. He had made the bastard pay though, since everybody lies or has secrets they want to stay… well, secret, and Gibbs had made it a point to discover his. Still, it couldn't undo what had been done.

Yet he'd taken a certain amount of satisfaction in mailing rather incriminating photos of the jerk to each of the partners of the law firm where he now worked in DC after he'd left JAG. It seemed that the former Lieutenant Commander, Mr. Howard 'White Bread' Jefferies, had a secret sexual fetish to dress up and act like an infant where his mistress kitted him in out a diaper and a onesie. He'd heard initially that the partners had been somewhat sympathetic until they discovered that all the jurists in the DMV had received the less than flattering photos, too. Now, he had it on good authority that the jerk was stuck in a pokey office writing wills and pre-nuptials for the well-heeled clientele of the firm and wasn't a happy camper. Jethro decided revenge was pretty damned sweet, even it didn't change anything.

DiNozzo had still melodramatically resigned, stating that his reputation was now tainted and he was now a liability rather than an asset. Gibbs had scoffed and accused him of being a drama queen and wanting to hurt his team because his feelings had been ruffled. That was after he'd swanned into the office to resign and effectively told Gibbs' and his teammates to kiss his ass. But it hadn't stopped him walking out on them… on him, and he placed the blame squarely on that damned pile of crap, Jefferies. He tried to tell DiNozzo that he shouldn't listen to Faith Coleman's opinion about his reputation either. She was one of those people to cause the whole stupid mess in the first place, but DiNozzo was one stubborn bastard and he wouldn't listen.

Then when Ducky had insisted that he couldn't continue to carry out his duties after betraying the Hippocratic Oath to _first do no harm _that he'd taken, Gibbs wanted to hunt DiNozzo down and hurt him seriously for making such a fuss about nothing and heaping so much guilt on the elderly ME. It wasn't 'til last month when he'd been yet again DiNozzo bashing for the disintegration of his much hyped team, that Tobias had finally snapped and pinned him to the wall of his basement and given him a bruising and vitriolic tongue lashing. According to him, DiNozzo had sought advice from not just Faith Coleman, but the Judge Advocate General in person, and the Attorneys' General of DC, Virginia and Maryland, and the Federal Attorney General himself. All of them, and the fibbie had emphasized ALL OF THEM, had concurred that his continued presence and participation in law enforcement could hinder prosecutions and even threaten past convictions, with lawyers launching appeals. Their opinion was that despite the allegations being proved to be groundless, dirt sticks!

Fornell continued, his furious brown eyes drilling into Gibbs' as he railed against the constant badmouthing of Gibbs' former trusted senior field agent.

"And just so you know, DiNozto was so not a "Drama Queen" you bastard. My bosses withdrew their standing invitation to a job after news of the NPD debacle circulated… as did other agencies and various PD's. Yeah, he might have still got a job in some dinky two-bit town as a sheriff… maybe… but it's a big if. He had no choice but to resign, being the honourable man that he is. Ironically, the only thing he was guilty of was being the only one of the much vaunted MCRT that wasn't a narcissist. Frankly, I'm not sure how or why he put up with y'all as long as he did," he finished in disgust.

He then proceeded to storm out without giving his old friend the Intel that he'd come to deliver. Much to his disgust, it took Gibbs 36 hours of badgering before the FBI agent finally decided to give up the data, since he was still so pissed off.

Of course, Gibbs had refused to listen to Fornell, not being one to take that sort of crap from anyone, even an old friend…especially an old friend. Still, as his world continued to crumble and everything that he had spent so much time and effort building up seemed like it was withering right before his eyes, he was forced into introspection. DiNozzo hadn't bothered to share with him that he'd sought legal advice about whether his law enforcement career had been salvageable, damn him. He could have said something!

According to Fornell, he'd also been inundated with ambulance chasers as well as a few hotshot attorneys who'd wanted to sign him up as a client and sue both NCIS and his former teammates for destroying his reputation and livelihood. It had sort of shaken him up a bit, but he'd also been hurt and angry that Fornell knew details that he didn't. Since when did he care about what happen to DiNozzo? He'd tried to arrest him for murder, twice!

He wished he could talk this all over with Ducky and get his spin on the new information, but the irony was that when Ducky had insisted on falling on his sword in the wake of DiNozzo's resignation, Gibbs had also had a massive falling out with his old friend. He had thought it was an enormous over-reaction on Ducky's part, and had told him so in no uncertain terms. Duck, for his own part, had been incensed by Gibbs' stubborn refusal to apologize to DiNozzo, apart from his carefully worded testimony in court.

After pleading with him to make peace with DiNozzo, or at the very least, offer a sincere apology, which he'd rejected outright, Ducky had returned home to Scotland in disgust. He was planning on spending some time with distant cousins and to take up a position as a guest lecturer at his old alma mater at Edinburgh Medical School. Although he had yet to sell Reston House, Gibbs was not sure that Ducky would ever come back to the States, and Gibbs missed him. He was one of a few individuals who had been prepared to put up with his difficult personality.

At work, things were much changed, too. The ME that was Ducky's replacement was middle aged, dumpy and utterly humourless. She delivered her verbal reports in a monotone with an absolute minimum of words, and apart from giving her reports, she wasn't interested in chit-chat. In short, she was everything that Ducky was not, everything that Gibbs admired, succinct, only interested in delivering a report with a brevity that Duck never had and with no desire to engage in gossip or anecdotes, and Gibbs hated her with a passion. Of course, the fact that she wasn't in awe of him, or at the very least terrified of him, like pretty much everyone else at NCIS, could have had something to do with his feelings for her. He missed the old ME something fierce, and it shocked him that he'd never understood just how much Duck had come to mean to him.

Then there were Abby and Jimmy Palmer, who had only remained working as an ME's assistant long enough to he finished his final exams, resigning even before the ink had dried on his diploma. It had always been tacitly understood that he would take over when Ducky was finally persuaded to retire, albeit kicking and screaming as they dragged him out of Autopsy for the final time. Moreover, before he left them, the shy retiring ME's assistant became a distant memory. He treated the members of the MCRT with scorn, and when it was necessary to actually interact with them, handled them with an icy politeness, although for Gibbs he reserved a special serving of contempt that he found particularly intolerable. It was also difficult to comprehend such a drastic Jekyll and Hyde-like change in the frightened rabbit of a kid who could barely look him in the eyes in the good old days.

Equally terrifying, in its way, were the changes the last twelve months had wrought in Abby Scuito. Gone were the Goth accoutrements that had long been the manifestation of her eccentric personality. While she continued to dress predominately in monochrome hues of which black was dominant, the bats, skulls and black and red make-up, the chains, spikes and over the top jewelry were merely a distant memory. Her new 'uniform' of black jeans and generic black or white tee-shirts and nondescript running shoes seemed wrong on so many levels. As was her strict avoidance of Caff-pows, indeed anything containing caffeine, which was beyond hinky as far as he was concerned. It was like Abby had been abducted by aliens and a pale imitation left in her place.

When Gibbs called Abby out on the drastic changes that she'd had made, she explained that it was her penance for taking away the livelihood of one of the best friends she had ever had. According to Sister Rosita, by forfeiting something that she held dear for a period of time, it was a way of expressing contrition. In typical Abby Scuito fashion, she had accepted the misguided advice, and like Ducky, had taken it to the nth degree

She told him that she felt she deserved to pay for her terrible behavior, and Gibbs' exasperation with her, too, made their relationship tense where it had always been so natural. In fact, Ducky and Abby's self-recriminations really got on his wick. The former ME with his self-flagellation and Abby with her sack cloth and ashes routine were overt yet constant reminders that they felt like he had also sinned. There was the unspoken implication that he should apologise, which made him furious, and he became even more of a bastard than usual, if that was possible. It wasn't his fault if he'd believed a bogus psychological report in DiNozzo's confidential unofficial file; there was no reason on earth to think that it was a fake.

It was really DiNozzo's fault anyway for being such an exhibitionist, not to mention an out and out hedonist, too. The stupid idiot was obsessed with being the centre of attention all the time with his movie quips, grandstanding and his obsession with all things designer with the silks, linens and cashmere, not to mention high end Egyptian sheets and towels. Seriously! He had nothing to apologize for… nothing at all. In Gibbs' opinion, if it walked like a duck and talked like a duck, then who could blame him for seeing a duck?

Well, apparently, a lot of people. Top of the heap was Leon Vance, who had never been a fan of the former agent, but apparently he was getting complaints from all the other leaders of teams and their Senior Field Agents. Seemingly, they'd been using DiNozzo as a sounding board to ferret out leads on cases when they'd reached a roadblock. Damned lazy bastards! Who knew, since DiNozzo never said, which was in itself a bit surprising? And scuttlebutt had it that the Director was getting flak from the rest of his peers in the Law Enforcement community for wasting a highly valued resource, which Gibbs thought was a bit hysterical and over the top. Yet maybe the most difficult for Gibbs personally to stomach was the loss of respect DiNozzo's resignation seemed to have created in the Washington office, for his team, and for him specifically.

For months after DiNozzo's departure, signs adorned people's desks with pronouncements about their personality, mental status or health. 'Hello, my name is Nikki Jardine and I'm a germaphobe. Feel free to mock me behind my back if it helps you bolster your own pathetic sense of self-worth' was a typical offering, and the team was infuriated by it. Gibbs especially wanted to hurt someone, but surprisingly, people now seemed to be immune to his evil glare and temper that had made him such a figure of fear in the past. It seemed instead to provoke pity or mirth, but perhaps that was in part due to the loss of their status as the team with the highest closeout rate for the first time in many years. Gibbs had never been concerned about people liking him, but he did pride himself on the fact that lesser mortals were in awe or feared him, yet he strongly suspected that that wasn't the case anymore.

And despite what Abby and Duck said, he wasn't the only one that thought it about DiNozzo, either. McGee and Ziva couldn't even claim sighting that bogus psych report as mitigation, but they both thought DiNozzo had NPD, and weren't losing any sleep over a bit of harmless joking around. Their job was stressful and humour, as his former SFA well knew, was a good stress reliever, and DiNozzo really was asking for it. So, he refused to feel guilty… after all, it wasn't as if DiNozzo was suffering or anything.

He left them all behind without so much as a backward glance, with no regard for loyalty or the fact Gibbs had spent years mentoring him. He'd gone and simply cut all ties with him. No, he was living the high life, with not a thought to his former colleagues, still fighting the good fight!

Gibbs had always considered his team to be talented and professional, provided he was there to ride their tails and give them regular boots up their butts, but for some reason that technique didn't seem to be effective anymore. Their closure rates had slipped dramatically down from 98 to 92 percent, and while they had always bickered, he'd always thought that it was mostly DiNozzo razzing them up. Still, after he'd gone and McGee stepped into the role of SFA, it actually seemed to have stepped up a notch. Ziva seemed to think that the job should have gone to her, conveniently forgetting that even if she was in line for the job, she was still an officer of Mossad, not to mention the fact that she had neither the temperament nor the experience for such a position.

But his agents were making him crazy. Somehow, the constant sniping at each other, on top of them picking on whatever probie was brave enough to apply to work with the team this month, was driving him up the wall, especially as it reflected in inferior job performances; infuriating an already feral Gibbs, who was already struggling with all the changes. Getting called up to the Director's office like a naughty boy really got on his wick. Having to defend himself and the team for going through probies faster than any of them bothered to learn their names was frustrating, and the Director was muttering dire threats. Especially when he made sarky comments like 'come back DiNozzo, all is forgiven', which Gibbs though was pretty ironic, even if maybe there was a grain of truth in there.

Frankly, there were days when he longed to turf both of his agents out on their butts, except that he needed them, unfortunately. Neither was up to the task of working solo with him like he'd done with DiNozzo. Hell, they weren't even up to working on a three-man team, as reflected by the decline in their closure rate and the fact that McGee had ultimately ended up with an anxiety disorder. Gibbs had to admit that he was surprised at that, seeing the new SFA had been on the team for almost five years and had done the job for four months a few years ago. Even Stan Burley had managed to last as his SFA for five years before succumbing to a peptic ulcer and crawling off to a life of obscurity and a Gibbs-free zone as an Agent Afloat. McGee had only been able to stick it for six months and that didn't say much for the size of his balls, and he wondered why he hadn't notice it before now.

Even more puzzling to Gibbs, was McGee's complete ignorance of dealing with at least 80 percent of the paperwork that was part and parcel of the job description for SFA. When he interrogated him about it, it seemed that during his previous time as SFA, DiNozzo hadn't turned over most of the clerical work to McGee, which surprised him since he always whined long and hard about paperwork. Yet when Gibbs checked, all the paperwork demanded by the pencil pushers during his sabbatical had been completed on time, so the only conclusion to be drawn was that DiNozzo had done it all.

Never had him pegged as a control freak, micro-manager, though. And if he was here, he'd kick his ass for not bothering to train his Probie SFA up properly so that Gibbs wouldn't have to contend with the HR, accounts, admin and requisitions departments who were constantly on his case about McGee's late or missing paper work. God knows he hated to be nagged, and it did nothing to improve his demeanor, either.

Honestly, that Delores woman was driving him to drink with her constant harping on about, "DiNozzo had always done such an exemplary job on the administrative aspects of his job and was so kind and polite."

And then finally, when he'd got McGee trained up to the point where he knew what he had to get done, which was half the battle, his SFA had to go and have a 'psychotic break' and develop an 'anxiety disorder'. What was the matter with the quacks and shrinks? What the Hell was wrong with calling a spade a spade and labeling it for what it was - a nervous breakdown and suffering from nerves, for crying out loud? All that claptrap about marginalization, alienation and stigmatizing labels, they were just going to have to come up with new labels in a few decades to replace psychotic break and anxiety disorder with some new psychobabble.

Meanwhile, he didn't have a senior field agent, and he hadn't been happy, especially since Vance announced that he was going to handpick McGee's replacement. So then the whole MCRT was pissed, since McGee was angry about having to surrender his promotion again and Ziva, who had been momentarily cheered when McGee was stood down, was now in filthy mood. Seems she seriously expected to get the job because of her spy skills and her connections, once again forgetting that she wasn't even an NCIS agent, but a liaison officer. The bullpen hadn't been a happy place for a long while now!

Gibbs was used to taking it for granted that he got to handpick his own team, at least until first Jenny Shepard and then Leon 'Dumbass' Vance came along. And he knew that this was yet another example of the Director exhibiting his dominance and power. Just as splitting up the team when he'd taken over the directorship and sent DiNozzo away as Agent Afloat and refused to recall him to the team had been his less than subtle attempt to tell Gibbs he wasn't running the asylum anymore. This was just further punishment for Gibbs doing an end run around him to bring the ungrateful bastard home, and it was ironic that DiNozzo's resignation had given Leon the ammunition to wield power… again. Of course, the fact that their phenomenal close out rate had dipped so badly was also a contributing factor, but then again, whose fault was that?

Yet as bad as the first six months had been after Ducky and DiNozzo left them, it's possible the last six months had been even worse. The Director's new golden boy, Special Agent Adam Hayes, had joined the team and become instantly hated by all three team members. He was tall and thin with sandy hair, bushy eyebrows and brown eyes. Ichabod Crane was his nickname round the office, and he was taciturn and by the book. By the book… what an understatement! He'd already written up the junior members of the team for various minor infractions and complained constantly to Gibbs and the Director about McGee and Ziva's gross insubordination and failure to follow his orders, and he had actually threatened to bring formal charges against Officer David.

Hayes didn't seem to understand her political connections, even though they'd been explained to him several times, or perhaps he just simply didn't care. Vance was furious and ordered Gibbs to rein her in, but Ziva seemed to blame him for not getting McGee's job and was borderline insubordinate to him, too. She was careful to remain just this side of truculent, but her body language spoke volumes, and her delay in responding to orders before finally acknowledging them were intended to convey her disdain. She was also openly contemptuous and defiant when Hayes ordered her to do things out in the field, and Gibbs was ready to wring her neck. She may have saved his six when it came to Ari, but that particular favour was rapidly wearing rather thin, and it was fast becoming dangerous.

Meanwhile, he wished that his new senior field agent had more social skills. While he wouldn't ever profess to be a people person himself, his new 2IC made him look good by comparison, which meant he now had no one to smooth over any ruffled feathers that he and the team managed to leave in their wake without even trying. It seemed that his new SFA, Adam Hayes, didn't do familiar, not even with his team, referring to everyone by their titles, wouldn't recognize a joke if it leapt up and bit him on his scrawny ass, and was about as interesting as a chia plant.

Well, that wasn't strictly true; chia plants made some people smile! But to add insult to injury, the humourless git was always quoting the NCIS procedural handbook at him… constantly. For someone who barely opened his mouth, he could sure spout rules and regs like no one Gibbs had met before. He was having fantasies daily about bumping him off and hiding his ectomorphic body… _see Duck, I really was paying attention to that interminable diatribe on body morphology._ Man, did he miss the verbose and outgoing former ME and his friendship.

He still couldn't believe it when at the end of his first week as senior field agent, Hayes had left a pile of uncompleted paperwork on Gibbs' desk. Scowling, he'd dumped it back on Hayes' desk, and was shocked to find it back on his desk with a short terse post-it note attached to say that these forms were not the purview of the senior field agent but the responsibility of the senior supervisory agent, and therefore he was not obliged to complete them.

Initially wanting to knock Hayes' block off, Gibbs had been certain that DiNozzo had always done them, and without pitching a fit about it, too. Finally, he'd swallowed his pride and spoken to Abby about it, expecting her to side with him, after all Hayes was a stranger and she didn't cope well with change. Instead, she'd shrugged and said that just because Tony had done much of his paperwork to keep the peace, didn't mean that Hayes would want to take on the thankless job, too, and he'd have to suck it up.

Gibbs finally recalled working late one night when DiNozzo was just settling into his promotion to SFA. They'd been alone in the bullpen after Viv had gone home, finishing up the weekly reports. He'd stomped off in disgust to go and get a caffeine boost, returning an hour later to find that DiNozzo had finished up for him, and from that point on Tony had unobtrusively taken it upon himself to complete all of the paperwork that didn't have to be filled out by the team leader, such as performance evaluations. And he'd done it without whining, pouting or looking for validation apparently, which seemed extremely out of character for such an attention seeker. It seemed that perhaps he had been messing with Gibbs' head… maybe.

So Gibbs was forced to spend endless hours doing paperwork that he hadn't done in years and had taken for granted he would never have to do again. Now that Hayes had refused to do any extracurricular activities, Gibbs, instead of feeling grateful for all the extra time he'd been spared doing mind numbing paperwork, was feeling churlishly angry at Tony. He was pissed that he'd left and forced him into doing extra work and had created so much havoc within the team. And Hayes was such a boil on his butt that he was seriously thinking of enlisting Ziva and Abby to bump him off and hide the evidence. Honestly, the new SFA had seen him giving McGee a head slap, and he'd had the audacity to give Gibbs a warning, telling him that corporal punishment was not permissible. As if that wasn't bad enough, he'd threatened that if he did it again, he would be forced to report him to HR, IA and the Director, who his father had apparently attended Annapolis Naval Academy with.

Gibbs couldn't believe the front of the guy, nobody had ever dared to call him on his Gibbs slaps before, and without them he was finding his temper ever more difficult to contain, because they had always been a way of letting off steam during cases. DiNozzo had always borne the brunt of them, and it wasn't as if the slaps had done him any harm, after all. How the Hell was he supposed to stay calm and sane while working a case and still maintain control over the team? It had been a good enough method for his predecessor and mentor, Mike Frank,s to discipline the MCRT before him, so it should be good enough for the current team. Hayes was a techno-geeky, intellectual, touchy-feely new age agent, and he was driving Gibbs to drink way more than his regular ration of Jack every night, and honestly, that wasn't doing his blood pressure any favours, either.

Then, in the last few weeks, things had gone from bad to worse. It seemed that Adam Hayes was a paranoid SOB because he had decided suddenly that Ziva was not to be trusted. He'd always been openly questioning of the feasibility of having a Mossad officer on the team and having dual allegiances, insisting that it was like letting the fox guard the henhouse. But after Gibbs and McGee had come back from a joint mission with the California OSP, something had happened and Hayes had gotten a real bee in his bonnet. They'd always clashed, probably because Ziva refused to obey his orders, but since his return, the tension between the senior field agent and Ziva David was magnified tenfold. Hayes was convinced that Ziva was not being honest with them and was holding back information.

Working that joint case with the FBI and ICE over the death of the ICE agent at the SecNav's 'poker game' with his interagency cronies, Hayes was openly incredulous when the ICE agent's death was ruled as natural causes. He continued to investigate after the case had been closed and found, with Abby's help, that the laptop that had belonged to the terrorist cell that they assumed had infiltrated the poker game and caused the death of a federal agent, had actually accessed the internet signal from Ziva's apartment. Hayes claimed that finally he had sufficient grounds to bring Ziva in for questioning. Since the MCRT had gone off duty and Gibbs had been off drinking bourbon and chin-wagging with SecNav about Leon Vance, Hayes called the on duty team and also organized extra backup from Metro PD. He had been determined to take Ziva into custody for questioning regarding the death of the federal agent.

Ziva was apprehended along with a Kidon operative, Michael Rivkin, who had entered the country illegally. The self-same Mossad officer that Gibbs had encountered in LA after he'd killed suspected terrorists, no doubt from the same cell as the case tied to the death of the ICE agent. The very same Mossad officer who Gibbs had instructed to leave the country, but was instead holed up in Ziva's apartment apparently playing grab ass. Rivkin was also the one that Ziva had personally vouched for when Gibbs had been in LA.

Damn it, Hayes was right all along about her being deceitful, since she didn't reveal that she was sleeping with Rivkin or had been in touch with him. Further evidence discovered by Abby showed that the listening device assumed to have been used by the terrorist cell had in fact come from Mossad. It was their attempts to spy on an Intelligence meeting of their Allies that had resulted in the death of the ICE agent. Worse still, Ziva had been supplying classified Intel on the LA op and the ICE agent's death, from both NCIS and her apartment.

It looked as if Eli would exert enough political clout to have Ziva and Rivkin deported back to Israel. Gibbs was shattered when he discovered that the woman who had become almost like a daughter to him, had lied to him. Yet when she begged him to give her a second chance, pleaded with him not to send her back to Tel Aviv and Mossad, she reminded him of his debt to her. How she'd chosen him over her brother and taken the life of her own flesh and blood. Much as he hated what she'd done and how she'd deceived them all, he'd gone to Vance and asked him to intercede on her behalf, only to have the Director laugh in his face.

Oh, yeah, Vance had taken great delight in informing him that Officer David had played him from day one. Her orders all along from her father had been to take out Ari because Mossad knew that he was a rogue agent. She also was under instructions to do so in a way that would garner loyalty and favour from Leroy Jethro Gibbs and worm her way into his affections and gain his trust. A mission in which she had succeeded at only too well, because Gibbs didn't suspect her for a second, and now he was looking like a real horse's ass for being suckered by a pretty female crying on his shoulder.

And that also begged the question, why the Hell hadn't Ziva taken the bastard out BEFORE he killed Cate? Or was Ari following Eli David's orders to kill Special Agent Caitlyn Todd to create a place on his team for his daughter? God damn it, no wonder his blood pressure was as high as a Manhattan skyscraper. And damn DiNozzo for leaving him with no one he could trust to watch his six anymore!

Next up: Our favourite Mossad Liaison officer Ziva David


	4. Chapter 4

Rating: T

Disclaimer: None of the characters from NCIS belong to me and this story is purely for entertainment purposes.

Chapter Warning: If you are a die-hard Ziva David fan then my recommendation would be to skip reading this chapter in its entirety because I can pretty much guarantee that it will offend you and elevate your blood pressure. Proceed at your own risk!

A/N Thank-you to everyone who left reviews for the last chapter. It's always great to read your comments. To the guest reviewer who defended me to someone who left negative feedback, thanks :) While not wanting to dwell overly on the criticism that Tony is OOC i.e. too good to be true, I'll try to keep this brief. I make no apology for writing Tony as incredibly capable professionally even though he is flawed emotionally. He is based upon Canon Tony, especially in seasons 1 & 2 but also 3, 4 & 5 to a lesser degree. The Tony who: earned a Gold Shield at a freakishly young age, brought down a Mafia Family again at a young age, saved Gunnery Sgt Bill Atlas while drugged and armed with simply a belt knife still managed to escape and disarm a serial killer who armed with a gun, find stolen antiquities while chained to a serial killer without backup or knowledge that White was a killer, had a closure rate that rivaled Gibbs despite working in a precinct where he was working multiple simultaneous cases, maintained their closure rate when Gibbs left, worked undercover for almost a year without any of his teammates realising, set up the computer systems pre-McGee when they were away from HQ on cases, installed a sophisticated piece of hardware into the telephone line and then single handed apprehended the sniper in One Shot One Kill, took control of a hostage situation and got everyone out unharmed without a shot fired... I could go on but I'd prefer to go on with the story. Oh and I forgot to thank a reviewer that drew my attention to a boo-boo in chapter 2. Thanks, appreciate the heads up :) Hope you enjoy the next chapter.

Finally credits: Arress is beta-ing this story once again and big thank-you for her help and suggestions. FYI who knew that spat the dummy was an Aussie idiom but's that's what Beta's are for lol. Oh and as per normal, all mistakes are my bad.

What a Difference a Day Makes: 8760 Little Hours

Chapter 4

Officer Ziva David, Mossad Liaison to NCIS: 9.5 months later

They had been making preparations to go to the airport so that her lover, Michael Rivkin, could catch his flight to Tel Aviv. Ziva had come home to find her lover, thirteen shirts to the breeze as she stated tersely in her sitrep to her Mossad superior, Officer Hadar. Seeing his confusion, she put it down to him not being au fait with American idioms, which she acknowledged had tripped her up when she first arrived in the US. Although it might have seemed to be easier to use their native Hebrew to communicate, it was SOB to speak in the native language of the country they were working in, to become as fluent as possible. Clearly Officer Hadar could do with the extra practice if he was not able to comprehend simple American idioms.

Anyway, when finally able to grasp that Michael was "drunk as a punk", Officer Hadar had ordered him to leave the country immediately and for the terrorist cell's laptop he acquired to be returned to Israel via Diplomatic Pouch since Rivkin had stupidly attracted the attention of NCIS. This was a necessary measure since he might be detained at the airport as he was travelling on a false passport and they couldn't run the risk of the laptop being seized, too. So Ziva and a very drunk Michael were about to get into Ziva's bright red Mini Cooper with the racing stripe that made her swell with pride every time she drove her beloved car and head to the airport. That's when they were taken into custody, led by that cretin NCIS Agent Adam Hayes, along with a bunch of agents she barely knew and local LEOs, who were all treating her like a criminal. She knew once Gibbs found out he would have her six, since they shared a special connection and he would tear those buffoons a fresh one.

Of course, she was concerned that the laptop that they'd procured thanks to great skill by Michael had been seized as evidence, but her Abba would bring pressure to bear with Director Vance and Mossad would get the Intel and the laptop that they had found. She reasoned that her father must have had just such an eventuality as this in mind when she'd been ordered by Eli David to take out her rogue brother, Ari, and do it in such a way that she won the loyalty of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. She had never been able to understand the purpose of her mission, which she had nevertheless completed with the detached efficiency of an obedient Mossad officer, but she hadn't questioned her instructions.

Now she knew that even if they uncovered the leaking of NCIS information to her lover, Gibbs would be a staunch ally, especially when she cried a little about being placed in the difficult position of pleasing two bosses, particularly when one was her father. She would turn up the fire on Gibbs by telling him that he was more a father to her than her Abba was, and if necessary remind him she'd killed her own flesh and blood to save his life. Between her hold over Gibbs and her father's relationship with Vance, she wasn't too concerned about her situation.

She was, however, furious that her preoccupation with Michael's drinking problem had made her sloppy and she'd let her guard down, allowing Hayes to get the drop on her. Of course, tempting as it was to teach him a lesson he wouldn't soon forget, she knew that it would be likely counterproductive, and so she had remained outwardly calm and collected. She'd let the fool take her into custody, but Michael, being rather affected by alcohol, blew his sack and resisted arrest. The result was several broken bones, a fractured larynx and a dislocated shoulder to a number of agents and cops before they descended en mass to subdue him.

Frankly, Ziva was shocked that her lover was so impulsive and dangerous. He really was out of control and perhaps the death of the ICE agent was less to do with unfortunate circumstances and more to do with a lack of judgment and competence on his part. Lover or no, it was her duty to her country and Mossad to divulge these observations to her superiors. Duty must come before personal considerations - even with her father, as he put duty before the welfare of his only remaining offspring. Eli David would expect no less of his daughter, who he'd groomed from middle childhood to be a top notch Mossad operative and his likely successor.

Then Gibbs found out, courtesy of the information on the laptop and then a dump on her work phone amongst other things, that she may not have been entirely straightforward with him, although she hadn't out and out lied to NCIS, exactly. Well, alright, she had lied to that idiot Hayes, but she hadn't told Gibbs any lies; she just hadn't been exactly completely forthcoming, either by word or deed. She could tell that Gibbs was pissed with her, disappointed and probably hurt that she had in his eyes betrayed his trust, so she had used her feminine wiles to push all his emotional buttons.

Those dossiers she'd prepared for Ari years ago were still bearing vegetables, long after his demise. Gibbs had choked up when she told him how she thought of him as a father figure, more so than her biological one, and he'd huffed and puffed trying not to get teary. In the end she knew he was going to try and help her stay in the US so that she could continue to be her father's right hand here in NCIS, even if she wasn't sure exactly why she was here. Well, okay, she could see that it had been helpful for Michael to have inside information when he was working within the US, but whether there was a larger agenda at play she didn't know or care. One thing that she did know, however, was that her father wouldn't be terribly happy that the Americans were aware that she was spying on them and leaking info to Mossad. Abba hated to lose his face.

Then Gibbs came back to interrogation, steely eyed and furious, apparently now aware that she had actually lied to him about Ari and used her subterfuge to win his loyalty and a place on the MCRT. If she thought he was hurt by the Mossad deception that lead to the accidental death of Agent Sherman, now he was enraged, and he took great pleasure in showing her the interrogation tape of his interview of a clearly alcohol impaired Michael. He inadvertently let slip that he was sleeping with Ziva on the orders of Eli David, who wasn't sure where his daughter's loyalties lay anymore. According to Rivkin, Eli felt that she was too soft and corrupted by Western mores.

Despite Mossad using sex as a tool to control their enemies and allies alike, Ziva had never expected as Eli David's daughter, to have their tactics used against her. She had known Michael since childhood and when Gibbs replayed the drunken ramblings of Rivkin for his lover, she had gone still and pale, her expression as cold as ice, enough to raise the hair on the back of the NCIS agents' necks that were guarding her. She'd heard people say many times that you should never cross Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and she understood what they meant now. He had felt emasculated when he discovered that the last four years had been based on a lie, and he wanted her to know what that felt like. She had to hand it to him, he understood revenge and vengeance as well as her father did, and she wondered if they might be related.

Paradoxically, while she felt angry at Gibbs, Michael and her father, she found herself experiencing feelings of rage directed at Tony DiNozzo as well. She had gotten too close to Rivkin when she had been sent back to Israel when Vance split up the team following Jenny Shepard's death. After they were finally all back together, she had reached a decision to stop pussy-toeing around and so she made a move on Tony, admitting her feelings of lust for him, but he hadn't taken the bait. She couldn't believe the man could really be that clueless. After all, even the less than perceptive McGee had picked up on the unresolved sexual chemistry and mutual lust between them and written about it in his wood-chip fictions.

Yet DiNozzo had seemed completely oblivious to her attention. The ultimate frat boy player who lusted after every pretty female had ignored her declarations in Gibbs' "office", and by rejecting her, he'd driven her back into the arms of Michael, who had been more than willing to sleep with her. Now she knew why! It wasn't as if DiNozzo wasn't interested in her, he'd been trying to sleep with her from the first day they'd met. So if he hadn't rejected her advances that day in the elevator, she never would have gone back to Michael.

Okay, Ziva was willing to concede that she might have been desperate to sleep with him, but that was purely physical attraction, nothing more than chemicals attracting and interacting. She did not respect him enough to think that it was true love, since she was by far the more superior agent and they could never be equals. She had exceptional interrogation skills, hand to hand combat, could handle all sorts of different types of weapons and was a graduate of the famed and feared Kidon training.

While DiNozzo would always just be a glorified cop who relied on Hollywood to help him solve crimes, and how sad was that? She'd decided to beat him at his own game and enrolled in a community college film appreciation course looking forward to the look on Tony's face when she solved their cases using scenarios from films before he did but somehow it was more difficult than it look. Of course, when you have very little of worth to store in your brain, it was easy to fill it full of useless and trivial details about mediocre movies instead of improving the mind with literature like she did. It infuriated her that technicallyDiNozzo had been her superior, and yet he was so clearly inferior in so many ways. Of course, he wasn't even that anymore!

Yet in spite of all that, of her training in the fine art of seduction, DiNozzo had wormed his way into her head and she wanted him, even as she wanted him to get out. Ziva knew it was madness, knew it would never work, and told herself that many times, but still she wanted him. She had tried to explain it away as an itch that she couldn't scratch. If only he would just give in and sleep with her just once, she could get him out of her system and move on. Yet the more that she couldn't scratch the worse the itch became until she was obsessing about it and couldn't think clearly. She was certain that if she could only have sex with him, she could forget him once and for all.

After all, she reckoned that all those women that dumped him must have done so because he was a flop in the bedroom, so if she could just confirm that fact for herself, she could put the fantasy to rest for good and move on. The irony was that while she had wanted him, he didn't even 'seem' to know that she existed, although she had trouble accepting that could be so. Ziva was not used to being irrelevant. Hated, despised, feared, lusted after or adored she could handle, even get off on, but never ignored, not when she was actively seducing him. That was an unforgivable insult and she had a long memory.

Still, even after he had packed up his marvels and ran away to play make-believe like the juvenile idiot he was, even while she was with Michael who was a real man, she had obsessed about why she hadn't been able to seduce him. She couldn't let it go, as much as she despised him for insulting her and making her feel inadequate. When she had prepared his dossier for Ari before she joined the team, she had dove-holed him early on. He was the archetypal 'poor little rich boy' who was brought up with a silver spoon by the hired help who were constantly changed whenever Tony's father needed a new mistress. So the young Tony was starved of affection and desperate for validation that he never received and knowing this, Ziva used it against him to control him.

She made it a point to denigrate his achievements, like when he saved Gibbs and a class full of children from a child suicide bomber. Admittedly, she was pissed that Gibbs had left him in charge of the hostage situation when clearly she was the most experienced and qualified. Bombs and hostage situations were everyday occurrences in Israel, yet he'd left a dumb cop in charge. Then with the successful resolution without a shot being fired, thanks to Tony's hobby of watching movies, she'd been desperate to belittle his contribution. She needed him desperate for praise and lacking in confidence.

It was a classic technique, the treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen approach, because she knew from watching Gibbs that he used the same method to control him and make him work even harder for his praise and approval that never came. Since Tony always had females falling over each other to go out with him, rejecting him would make him even more desperate to win her affections. Well. that had been the plan anyway… except when she finally could not deny her lust for him any longer, he'd pretended he was clueless.

In fact, Tony had a lot more than that to apologise for, since Gibbs had been intolerable to work for since he'd run away. Not only had his resigning made Gibbs puce with rage, it had affected the way the team was regarded by the rest of the DC office. As a result they had all lost status, in addition to the scorn that had been generated during the whole Rixon Wells trial. It seemed that a lot of people were cupboard DiNozzo supporters… well, since they didn't have to work on the same team as him, they could afford to be generous.

Of course, it hadn't helped at all that the team's close out rate slipped, although if they'd given her the senior field agent position, it would have been a different story. Frankly, though, she wasn't surprised that McGee couldn't cut it as Gibbs' SFA. He was an exceptional computer analyst and a barely adequate field agent, but he was definitely not leadership material, and certainly not of the MCRT.

Ziva remembered when she'd been preparing those dossiers for Ari on the team, she'd come across a psychological term in McGee's personnel file from his Psych Evals describing him as having a Passive-Aggressive personality. This wasn't a term she was very familiar with, associating it with new age American pop culture balderdash and dismissing it before now as irrelevant. Discovering that it was discussed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM- IV) made her sit down and take notice. In Appendix B it stated _"A pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicted by four (or more) of the following:_

_Passively resists fulfilling routine social and occupational tasks_

_Complains of being misunderstood and unappreciated by others_

_Is sullen and argumentative_

_Unreasonably criticizes and scorns authority_

_Expresses envy and resentment toward those apparently more fortunate_

_Voices exaggerated and persistent complaints of personal misfortune_

_Alternates between hostile defiance and contrition"_

Ziva was rather surprised after researching the personality disorder that McGee would be allowed to serve as a federal agent, as he would have been deemed as being unsuitable to serve in Mossad, probably why she was not familiar with the particular label, but she wasn't above making use of his vulnerabilities in the same way she exploited Tony's. With Tim she knew that he would do anything to avoid a confrontation if it was at all possible, so it was easy enough to bully him, especially when his hand to hand skills were barely adequate. Even the hint of whipping his buttocks was enough for him to back off every time. While from her perspective that was a good thing when she wanted to influence him and get her own way, as an agent holding a supervisory position, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Of course, she couldn't respect him, knowing how easy he was to manipulate, so it shouldn't be a surprise she was so reluctant to follow his orders, especially in the field.

Sure, she'd found his less admirable personality traits highly useful in helping her to target and isolate Tony, to weaken him and shore up her place on the team. Especially when she first joined the MCRT and Tony had been so suspicious of her. Tim had skipped at the opportunity to hurt Tony by excluding him from her dinner party when she'd first joined the team. His face when he'd rubbed the SFA's chin in the fact that everyone on the team had been invited and attended her party except for him (well apart from Ducky) had been a mixture of smug cruelty and little-boy glee. Of course, while she knew that Tim would have her six in their little scheme, it had been an unexpected bonus that Abby and Gibbs had taken so much satisfaction in joining in on the teasing. Still, it did confuse her, since they always made such a fuss about being a family and having each other's backs.

She'd finally concluded if it shored up her position on the team, who was she to kiss a gift pony on the lips? It suited her purposes well in making Tony feel unwanted, which had the desired effect of him not expressing his suspicions and doubts about her replacing Agent Todd. Mission accomplished, and she wasn't going to feel guilty that they'd upset Tony.

But the very reason that McGee made an admirable co-conspirator in black-anting Tony's position on the team and making him doubt himself, also made her despise Tim, too. She knew that if it suited his purposes and he saw her as a threat, he would be just as happy to stab her in the back as well. It was like a mistress who wanted her lover to leave his wife, expecting they could have a monogamous relationship once he'd divorced the wife. But what made the other woman think that if he did, that her lover would stay faithful to her? If he'd done it with her, he could do it to her!

So, she couldn't respect Tim and she had no desire to have to take orders from him. It was laughable that someone like him should be put into a position of authority over her. His training, at least apart from his computer skills, was minimal, and while she had been far superior to DiNozzo, he'd at least had somewhat adequate training at the Police Academy, years of education at a military school, six years in law enforcement even before his FLETC training, and over seven years as a federal agent. She'd never felt like he would get her killed because of indecision, panicking or inexperience. McGee was soft, he couldn't lie to save his life, and he had some serious phobias that could very easily get her or someone else killed.

Sure, everyone had fears, even her, but she had been trained never to show them, or more importantly, to never give into them, but what happened it they were hanging off a building and McGee was in charge? Or what happened if they were set upon by aggressive dogs while canvassing a neighbourhood? He was just as likely to turn tail and jog, leaving her without backup. He'd probably run off and lock himself in the car like a frightened child and not even care that he'd cut off her avenues of escape, because he was too scared to think rationally. No, he wasn't fit to be the senior field agent on the premier MCRT, and she wouldn't rest until he was removed, either.

Ziva thought it was pretty ironic that when she decided to destabilise McGee, it was using many of the passive-aggressive techniques she seen him use in the past. Not passing on messages when he wasn't at his desk, taking credit for info that Tim had found by getting to Gibbs on the sly, lots of hurtful comments that she pretended were friendly jokes, but were targeting all of his insecurities, excluding him at every opportunity, annoying Gibbs so that he took out his anger on his SFA. Then there were the time honoured techniques that Abba had taught her. Subtly changing his requisition forms by moving a decimal point or a couple of zeros or changing details on his reports on occasion to make him look bad or incompetent, not that he wasn't doing an excellent job of it on his own.

The silly fool had decided to get his revenge on Tony by murdering him in his book and all Hell had broken out with Thom E. Gemcity's fans, many of which were as crazy as a spoon. Then when Gibbs had learnt about the chapter in McGee's last book, Subterranean Ten, where Agent McGregor engages L.J. Tibbs in a BDSM relationship and taught him to embrace his sub nature, their boss had gone undomesticated. He was making McGee's life a misery by making him train in hand- to- hand combat with him every day so that his bruises had bruises. She honestly wasn't a bit surprised when he lost it and had to be committed to the crazy ward. At least the director finally saw the error of his ways and demoted him, but she couldn't believe when she was passed over again and the position had been given instead to the appalling Adam Hayes.

Now as she sat on the wrong side of the interrogation table figuring out how long it would take for Eli to get her out of this mess, she could hear people shouting and running around. Knowing that something was happening, she was frustrated that she didn't know what it was. Pulling out her set of lock picks and shaking her head, disgusted that no one had searched her properly, she made short work of the locked door, emerging in the hallway to absolute pandemonium. Forcing her way to the second interrogation room, she found people crowded around Michael who was lying on the floor. Dead! While Vance was yelling at McGee and Adam Hayes for not finding the suicide pill when they search him, Ziva let out a howl of anguish at the sight of her dead lover that chilled everyone present. Fixing Adam with a hate filled glare, she hissed at him in Hebrew that it was his fault that Michael was dead and she would make him pay.

Later when the shock had worn off a little, Ziva realized that she was going to do a great deal of fancy foot toil to get out of this one and remain in the US. She would do anything to avoid having to go back to Tel Aviv, because with Michael now dead, Eli would blame her and demand that she take Michael's place on his mission to the Horn of Africa to find Saleem Ulman. Essentially, it was a suicide mission, and she would do anything to avoid that. America suited her just fine.

It was clearly time for desperate measures. Perhaps she could seduce SecNav to be her candy daddy. She had heard whispers from her contacts that the man had a sweet tooth for younger women and his tastes were anything but vanilla ice cream, and she'd excelled in the class using whips and chains.

7 Weeks Later:

Ziva sat on her bunk in the narrow confines of her cabin aboard the Damocles' wondering how she ended up on this flea pit. As she suspected, her father had been incensed at the loss of Michael Rivkin and her part in his downfall. Which Ziva felt was rather hypocritical, seeing he had ordered Michael to sleep with her, but apparently she was to blame for not neutralizing Adam Hayes before he arrested the Kidon operative.

So determined was he that Ziva should go in Michael's place that he called in his debt with Leon for saving his life during his first mission in Amsterdam. When she'd pleaded her case with SecNav and offered to do anything to stay at NCIS, the bastard had slept with her and then loaded her on a transport flight back to Israel. It seemed that Eli either called in a favour with Davenport, or more likely, had something to hold over his head, which was definitely Abba's style, quite frankly. Now, she was on her way to attempt to locate the terrorist training camp and kill Ulman. When she returned… if she returned, she would track Philip Davenport and Adam Hayes down and make them pay, but right now she could hear a lot of shouting and running… something bad was definitely going down!

Next chapter: We finally get a glimpse at what Tony's been up to.

End Notes: I had too much fun writing Ziva-isms for this chapter. I think my fav was kiss a gift pony on the lips :D Look forward to hearing which ones other people liked most. And because I don't have people correcting the Ziva-isms in this chapter since she is thinking the,m I would like your thoughts on whether you would rather that I italicize her malapropisms to make it clear that they are in fact intentional murdering of idiom, not boo-boos?


	5. Chapter 5

Warnings: None for this chapter. Well... not unless you have something against a competent and intelligent Tony... and if you do what the heck are you doing reading this story? *Grinning hugely*

A/N Which brings me to the reviewer who feels that McGee was OOC in the last chapter. I've placed my response to that assertion at the end of the chapter so that people who are interested in the chapter don't need to read a lengthy answer if they just want to focus on the story. I tried to keep it brief and I restrained myself from using a lot of examples but it is still much too long to be included here.

Thank-you to everyone that continues to PM, review, follow and fav the story. The support is much appreciated because it helps to encourage me to be antisocial and write rather than hang out doing other stuff lol. I hope you enjoy the glimpse into Tony's new life. The past few chapters have all been retrospective, examining what happened following Tony's departure but next chapter the story will pick up in the present. Enjoy :)

Finally, I have to thank my Beta Arress for her help and advice in this story. Any mistakes are my bad.

What a Difference a Year Makes: 8760 Little Hours

Anthony DiNozzo Secret Agent: One year later

Anthony DiNozzo smoothed down his beloved Armani dinner jacket as he checked his hair to make sure it wasn't sticking up like a porcuswine or was that hedgepig. (Some habits die hard and he still found himself using the odd Ziva-ism even though it was a year since his resignation from NCIS.) Now, he was a spook, but not your average CIAss. No, he was a James Bond-like secret agent sort of spook that was undercover as an up and coming, talented but shallow and insular actor. One that was striving to become the next big Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but also went around saving the world when no one was looking. He was kind of like a real-life superhero, he smirked sardonically, more Batman that Superman, except that his disguise was his movie star persona which he was gradually building up, rather some latex suit and mask or wearing your underwear on the outside sort of costume.

In his first year, he'd mostly been building up his screen persona with the odd bit of intelligence gathering thrown in, and everything had gone like clockwork. A large part of his success was undoubtedly thanks to his handler and publicist, who certainly knew her job… well, both jobs. He'd started off by winning the role of Robert Wagner in the Natalie Wood biopic with little difficultly. Mastering the intonation, speech patterns and mannerisms had been fairly easy, and he'd had won critical acclaim for his debut acting role, even garnering praise from the man himself, who predicted he had a bright future. Carter and Ceinwen were over the moon to see their plan coming together so well!

He already had quite a reasonable fan base after his first role, and it continued to expand with each subsequent role he played. He's won a role as Penelope Cruz's love interest in a Spanish-speaking murder mystery movie shot in Majorca right after the biopic, before winning the lead role in an indie film about a serial killer starring as a small town cop. The film earned accolades at the Sundance Film Festival while the critics raved about his grittily realistic performance, which greatly amused both Tony and his spook partner, Ceinwen Davies. Now to finish up the year, he'd been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, and the Penelope Cruz film had also been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. It meant that he'd achieved the goals that he, Ceinwen and Carter Johnson, his boss, had set when he embarked on his new career of creating a credible persona as a promising actor who'd been discovered by a famous Hollywood publicist.

As he prepared for the ceremony, a part of him was looking forward to the evening. He'd be rubbing shoulders with boyhood idols, possibly even get to meet some stars like Sean Connery, who was presenting the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award tonight, but he was nervous about being surrounded by so many celebrities, too. He didn't want to blow the cover he was establishing movie by movie by getting star struck and acting dumb, or getting an attack of verbal diarrhea, either. That would be so uncool and out of character!

Then there was issue of how to cope if Anthony Paddington did win New Star of the Year. For as long as he could remember, he had longed for validation for his efforts and achievements, so it was one of life's little ironies that when he actually received praise, it made him feel unbelievably uncomfortable. Like he wasn't worthy of it and he would have to make a joke about it or downplay its importance. Neither option would be appropriate in this situation, so he hoped that his undercover skills were up to the task. He was supposed to be vain and shallow, ready to bask in all the accolades. Playing a version of himself was proving to be much more difficult than somebody else, probably because he'd never really been comfortable with the person he was.

Perhaps the real issue though was that praise from most people never felt like it was real; it always felt that people were simply being polite. After all, he more than anyone as a skilled undercover agent knew how easy it was to tell white lies and how it made the fabric of everyday life flow more smoothly. No, there had only ever been two individuals in his life whose praise and respect he'd ever truly craved, despite everything that had happened between them. His father and Gibbs certainly had that much in common inasmuch as they both possessed the power to turn a highly competent adult into a sniveling child, desperate to win their approval and affection. The truly pathetic thing about it was that he knew damned well that that the chances of that happening were probably somewhere between nothing and zero.

He and Gibbs hadn't spoken since he left NCIS last year, nor were they likely to either. Gibbs rarely contacted him even when he was on his team, unless it was work related, and even when they did have social contact, Tony was always the one to instigate it. He would always have to go to Gibbs' place; the man never sought him out, and even when the boss issued the occasional cowboy steak invitation, which Tony figured was Jethro's somewhat lame version of a mea culpa/good job/buck up and get your head out of your ass or whatever, it was always done on his terms. There wasn't any reciprocity which would imply a relationship or friendship because that would suggest a certain equality that Gibbs would never concede. He never deigned to take up any of the frequent invitations that Tony or the rest of the team threw his way. Ducky had been trying to persuade Gibbs for more than a decade to accept his invitation to Thanksgiving, for Pete's sake.

So, even before his resignation, taking into consideration how much things had changed between him and Gibbs following his little margarita safari, as Jenny had coined it, the chances of him winning Gibbs' approval was as likely as Hell freezing over. Tony knew that Gibbs wouldn't be the slightest impressed with his new career… well, his cover career anyway, but he never had much patience for spooks either, so he doubted he would be proud or impressed. Even when he'd given one hundred and ten per cent of himself while on Jethro's team, Tony could count on single digits the amount of times Gibbs had given him genuine praise in the eight plus years they'd worked together. And even then several of those instances had been accompanied by a stinging put down to rob the praise of its power.

And when it came to his father, the irony was that all his life he had been willing to walk barefoot over hot coals to make his father proud of him, all the while simultaneously kidding himself that he didn't give a damn about what his old man thought of him. The truth was that while Tony had inherited some superficial commonalities with his father, they were in reality as alike as chalk and cheese. Perhaps the most significant difference between them being the strong moral code that Tony lived by, which made it impossible to earn his father's admiration. Now, the absurdity was that his change of career had finally earned Senior's unequivocal support and admiration, and it pissed Tony off to no end.

Senior was always turning up on the sets where he worked to try to network and make contacts with celebrities, always looking to find new marks to target for his investment schemes. As far as Senior was concerned, Tony was proving his worth as an adult in the Tony DiNozzo world of business, finally earning his keep like he'd done as a child when he'd paraded his son around like a pet or called on the small boy to entertain with his musical talent. This past year, Tony's father had embarrassed him greatly with his sleazy behavior with anything rich or female and his predatory behavior when he sniffed out potential investors.

He'd bitched about him to Carter and Ceinwen, who'd sympathized with him even while reassuring him that he was typical of many parents of stars. Carter Johnson soothed him saying that as mortifying as Senior was, he was great for local colour for his cover story and the analysts had already factored in this very behaviour before they started. Nothing, Carter assured his newest agent, could lend credibility to his cover like a greedy, grasping relative, so they really should be grateful to Tony's dad since that sort of authenticity couldn't really be orchestrated.

Giving himself a mental shake, Tony DiNozzo aka Anthony Paddington picked up his keys, wallet and the rectangular velvet box with a bow perched artistically atop and sighed as he exited his hotel room, careful not to crush the bow. And herein lay the remainder of his angst about tonight, he thought morosely. Strolling down the hall to his handler's room to collect his date for the Awards, he felt extremely panicky. Ceinwen had assured him that no one would find it at all odd that he was taking her along as his date for the award ceremony tonight. After all, she is his publicist, and in Hollywood it was considered in vogue for stars to date their publicists. The trouble, Tony sighed, was that he felt a hell of a lot more than he should for his handler. In fact, he'd decided a while ago that if he was being completely honest with himself, he would have to admit that he could easily fall in love with Ceinwen Davies if his resolve weakened even a fraction.

A part of his feelings were probably in part because she reminded him of Jeanne, insomuch as his handler was also a beautiful and highly intelligent woman, yet she managed to look past his façade to see that he was so much more than more than simply looks and brawn. They talked for hours about politics, religion, world affairs, literature, art and philosophy, just like he had with Jeanne. Ceinwen equally didn't fawn over him, which was either a good or bad thing depending of your viewpoint, since he had no experiences of anything remotely approaching being cosseted as a kid. He always found being fussed over made him feel claustrophobic and desperate to escape, but with his handler they had developed a genuine sense of camaraderie. She also had a strong personality and was equally at home taking care of herself. Tony had always found himself attracted to women of strength, he realized, remembering Jeanne and the drug mules that held them hostage in the hospital morgue and how she didn't fall apart.

Yet Ceinwen, even with her kick ass skills and attitude, had no issue with encouraging and supporting him, and all without resorting to petty putdowns or negating her praise. Nor did she resort to playing on his many insecurities to control and manipulate him, unlike other people had done in the past. All of which made for a refreshing change, and it was no wonder that he was becoming smitten by her, despite his best intention to keep her at arm's length. The irony wasn't not lost on him that like the relationship he had with Jeanne Benoit when he was also undercover, both relationships felt more honest and fulfilling than he'd ever experienced, even with his former partners or teammates. Yet knowing how badly he screwed up Jeanne's life, he has no desire to do the same to Ceinwen, who had fast become his best friend.

So, determined not to screw up their friendship, Tony embarked upon a flurry of relationships with his leading ladies and a bevy of starlets, seeking to distract himself from the woman that he really desired. Ceinwen had, not unreasonably, assumed that he was establishing his cover as an up-an-coming actor with a playboy reputation. Ironically, he was rapidly earning a reputation as one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors.

Although if she was at all observant, and Tony knew that she was, she probably noticed that the constant stream of beautiful dates seemed to make him melancholy and self-deprecating to the point of self-loathing. Although Tony knew that they were using him to further their careers, he was using them too to try to distract himself from his growing fondness for his handler, and it made him feel both guilty and grubby. Finally, after a period of him turning down scores of females hell bent on persuading him into their beds, Ceinwen had confronted him, knowing that something was wrong and determined to discover what ailed him.

Knowing about Jeanne Benoit, she assumed that he was still caught up in his feelings for her and she confronted him, thinking that he needed to talk. He'd told her when they first began working together that he was going to write to Jeanne and clear the air, to apologise and tell her how he'd really felt about her. He wanted her to know that he had lied when he told her at their final meeting that he'd never loved her and that he was sorry… sorry for all of the lies and deception. Although Ceinwen had some reservations about him making contact with her, she seemed to understand how important it was to him and she'd supported him to go for it. Now, when she confronted him, concerned about what was wrong, wanting to know if he still had feelings for Jeanne, he groaned.

"If only it was that easy, Ceinwen," he responded, his head in his hands. "I think I'll always love her, but equally I'll always be consumed with guilt about what I was forced to do to her. So as much as I might wish it otherwise, we are done."

"So what is wrong then, Tony? The gossip rags and the paparazzo are starting to speculate that you have a secret lover since you've stopped dating." His handler looked at him and was surprised to see that she had inadvertently hit the mark. "OMG, Tonio, who is she?"

Tony groaned, embarrassed that he couldn't prevent the blush from spreading across his face. Bowing his head, he mumbled, "Someone that I can't have."

Puzzled, she pushed at him. Was this secret lover married? "Why not, Tony?"

"Leave it, Lovely!" he growled.

Ceinwen smiled at the nickname that Tony had given her. Her name was Welsh and meant beautiful, white browed or lovely depending upon who you consulted and she found his pet name endearing, especially when he'd said it was fitting when he bestowed it on her. He was such a charmer!

"Can't do it babe. Who is she?" she coaxed, dying of curiosity.

Tony had stood up and paced up and down the hotel suite before stopping and sneaking a peak at his partner. "Haven't you guessed yet, Lovely?" he asked her, regarding her with a look that was part exasperated and wholly tender. Seeing the dawning realization, he continued. "Now you know why I said I can't have her, so leave it be. Please?"

"But what if I feel the same, Tony? There's no reason why we can't date, this isn't NCIS and there is no Rule 12."

"Ceinwen, you're killing me here. I don't care about Rule 12, I never did! It never stopped me when I decided to go after Paula Cassidy and contrary to the scuttlebutt; it wasn't what stopped me dating either of my teammates. If I'd really been interested in more than a fling with either of them, I wouldn't have let a stupid rule get in the way. It wasn't as if Gibbs ever managed to stick to them himself, after all. I just was never interested in them enough to break the rules."

He saw that she was confused. "Damn it Lovely, I don't want to date you or sleep with you! I think I've fallen in love with you and it's killing me! I want to marry you and have kids and a dog with you and grow old together," he revealed; his voice becoming louder until he was practically yelling. "Now do you get it? Why I can't have you? We're spies, we're under cover, none of this is real," he whispered, before storming off and grabbing his gym gear and disappearing out the door of their hotel suite.

When he'd come back hours later, exhausted and sweaty she was waiting to ambush him. Ceinwen argued that while they were undercover, it didn't mean that their feelings for each other weren't real. Which was all well and good but what happened if it didn't work out. They couldn't just break up and go their separate ways; they still had to work together long term, he argued.

Ceinwen had conceded that it was a valid concern but that repressing their feelings would in the end have the potential to be just as problematic. She insisted that bottling up emotions was bad for you and Tony had snorted, thinking that his partner clearly wasn't an adult child of alcoholic parents like him. Repressing his feelings, telling lies, keeping secrets and denial were all SOP in the DiNozzo family and he honestly didn't know any other way to be. It was normal for him but probably also why he had such deep-seated issues with trust.

Still… Tony explained that it wasn't the only impediment to him getting into a relationship with her. What if anything happened to her or him and in their game, that wasn't such an outlandish suggestion? Or what if the dirt bags used her to get to him and control him. He'd never be able to forgive himself. And Lovely had agreed with him that it was a possibility but then she had asked him a question that had been the game changer.

"Tell me Tony, did it hurt any less when you lost Agent Todd because she was simply your partner than it did when Paula Cassidy sacrificed herself for you? Whether you and I are life partners or simply partners and anything happens to either of us it's gonna hurt so bad. But is that a reason not to grab what happiness we can together if we both care for each other? Life is too short not to grab any opportunity for happiness when it presents itself, since they don't come along all that often.

She reached out and kissed Tony, chastely on the lips before continuing. "In our job, I think that since we've found each other, we should see our feelings for each other as a gift to be cherished. You said that this isn't real, that we are undercover but Tonio, this isn't like you and Jeanne. We both know that we are undercover and there isn't any deception between us. If anything, it would be a more honest relationship that we might try to find with anyone else because we would never be able to tell them who and what we really are."

Tony cocked his head to the side as he considered her arguments. "Maybe… but…"

Ceinwen interrupted him, "And really, what other options are there but lie to anyone we're dating and I know right now that you're gonna have a big problem with that if you get serious about her. Or we can never have a serious relationship again while we are undercover. Both of us know that this job is, in all likelihood, a long-term one… possibly years… hopefully longer if we are doing our jobs properly and I don't want to be alone. Life is too short to be lonely Tonio, when you don't have to be. Who knows what is around the next bend!"

Tony looked at her, conflicted and confused as he considered everything that she had to say. "Maybe Lovely, but what if we get together and it doesn't work out? I suck at relationships, what if I screw it up? We're still gonna need to work closely together."

She smiled and took his hand, playing with his long, elegant pianist's fingers as she considered his fears, seriously. "Did you and Paula work together again after you broke up?" She sensed his assent as he nodded. "Well there you go then; you were both professionals. Plus we can take this thing between us as slow as you like so that if we don't work, we won't have gotten in too deep."

And so they had agreed to explore their feelings for each other but slowly. Tonight Ceinwen was going to be his date for the Golden Globe Awards and even though she had been his official escort on many occasions, tonight was different. It was their first official date and he was ridiculously nervous and desperate not to screw it up. He'd found a pair of antique earrings in sterling silver with marquisettes and black pearls that were a close match for his handler's pair of antique hair combs. He hoped she liked them and understood that he was so awkwardly trying to say.

And so, even though Tony was still far from certain that they should begin a relationship, he knew that he also needed to not self-sabotage and give them a chance at least. So as he strolled down to her hotel room he was nervous and fidgety. Separate hotel rooms had also ensued after they decided to explore their feeling because Tony wanted to romance her in much the same way that he had with Jeanne. He was eager to develop a relationship separate from their working one and Ceinwen hadn't argued. Knocking on her door he hoped that everything went well tonight and he didn't trip over his feet or his tongue. Somehow tonight he felt as awkward Jimmy Palmer having to deliver a sitrep to a caffeine deprived Leroy Jethro Gibbs!

~ What a Difference a Year Makes: 8760 Little Hours ~

Now one week on from the Golden Globes he was driving with Ceinwen to appear on Tonight Show and she was prepping him about what to say and how to act and trying to keep him calm. Finally after going through all the likely questions she decided to distract him from his nerves by changing the subject.

"We start location work at the Naval Yard at DC next week, Tony. Are you ready for that? Having to see everyone again? Even the people who were openly disparaging are probably going to turn out to watch you and the other actors."

Tony looked at Ceinwen fondly. "Yeah I know, Babe. Can't say I'm thrilled at the prospect but not much either of us can do about it. I'm just grateful that they're letting me do most of my own stunts, cuz I'll need the distraction."

"Maybe Tony but you end up with anything more serious than a hangnail and your ass is mine," his handler warned him seriously. "Oh wait, it's already mine, so you better not break it," she joked, flirtatiously.

"Yes Boss," he mock saluted her as she glared at him.

"If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times, I'm not your boss I'm your partner," she lectured exasperatedly.

"Yes Dear," he smirked. Of course it'll be nice to catch up with the old DiNozzo support crew again. It's been too long since I caught up with the gang. But tell me again, why are we doing this movie? It's not exactly historically accurate … a British Naval officer commanding a US destroyer during World War II sound rather implausible to me."

"Because Tony… playing a British Navy Captain is going to be really good for your reputation even if it isn't plausible or accurate. And it's completely different from the movies you done before so it shows your versatility especially with showing you are able to do other accents. Remember why you are doing this… it's a means to an end."

"Yeah, I know but really… they have to do location shooting at the DC Naval Yard? The only place worse would be the bull pen at NCIS," he grumbled. "Man, I have the worst luck… as if getting the freakin plague wasn't enough!"

"Chin up Babe, I have some news that will make you smile," She grinned at her partner, looking forward to his reaction. My sources tell me that your about to be courted for the lead role in a big budget movie remake of Magnum PI. Of course, you'd have to be willing to grow a moustache. Not sure if I could cope with that!" She searched his facial expression, surprised that he hadn't made a sound. He was staring at her, dumbstruck.

Finally he found his voice. "Please don't toy with me, Lovely! Are you serious?"

She nodded, grinning like Sylvester having swallowed Tweety Bird. "Oh I wouldn't joke about something so momentous."

Tony unleashed a boyish grin as he pumped the air with his fist. "OH YEAH! I'd grow a moustache on my butt to play Thomas Magnum, he is one of my favourite all time television characters, you know." He finished excitedly. "Oh man I can't believe it, how cool that would be!"

Ceinwen chuckled, Tony's reaction while delayed initially, when he found his voice, was everything she could have wished for, He was thrumming with excitement and practically bouncing on the seat as he drove. "Whoa Tigger, calm down" she teased thinking of A.A. Milne's much loved character. "They're going send me the script for you to read and they want you to read with the actors trying out for Rick and T.C. Of course, that's if you want it," She teased him, playfully.

Tony flashed a scornful glare at her, not even dignifying her remark with a response. Instead his thoughts turned to the other cast members. "I wonder who will end up playing Higgins." He mused.

Ceinwen thought for a split second. "I think like the lead, it's been cast without audition, too. I believe they've signed that English actor, David McCallum. He's a little long in the tooth, as my dad would say but he is very youthful looking, so he will be able to get away with it. And I saved the best until last, Tom Selleck is gonna have a cameo playing Magnum's father." She grinned a Cheshire cat sized grin as she announced the last little snippet and looked across as Tony who looked like he was going to burst at the prospect of working with a childhood idol.

"WOW!" After several minutes of silence Tony opted to change the subject since he needed to get his head straight to do the talk show so he tried to push it to the back of his mind. They could celebrate later.

"Has Carter heard anything from McGee's literary agent about us getting the screen rights to the Deep Six series, Lovely?"

"Oh yeah. He has agreed to the deal although he is stipulating that he be given creative control over the screen play."

Tony snorted trying not to laugh hysterically. "Yep, sounds about right! Offer him a job as a consultant script writer. Since it's not likely we would ever want to make it into a movie it will keep him happy, but no way in Hell is he getting any creative control even if we have no intention of filming it. I'm damned if I'll reward him any more than I have to for being a passive aggressive twerp… I can't believe we have to buy up the screen rights just because he's gotten his TISA groupies all hot and bothered by killing off Agent Tommy… Causing a near riot with the lunatic fringe gave the franchise far more publicity than his damned books ever would. We really don't need the controversy." He fumed, wishing that the TPTB had forced him to write something original.

Ceinwen nodded. "Don't worry, Carter's as pissed off as you are and he's willing to play hard ball over the negotiations. It annoys him no end that NCIS never had the balls to do the right thing and step in and have the books removed from publication due to National Security issues seeing McGee based it on actual cases and personnel."

"Yeah, well when it was published our beloved former director had other things on her mind, like chasing arms dealers that she believed had killed her father." Tony quipped cynically.

"Be that as it may, the fact is that this publicity is increasing the profile of NCIS and the odds of someone connecting Agent Tommy with Anthony Paddington is a lot higher than any of us would like especially if it were ever to became a film. He's also the only one that can't see that he took his characters straight out of real life except for the TISA crap that is. Carter is as keen as you to tie up the film rights tight so it doesn't happen and I think that McGee's motivated to sign the rights over. I've heard that his publisher dumped his latest book and decided not to renew his contract."

"Did you…?"

"No Tony, it had nothing to do with us. It was the fans that stopped buying the book. It seemed that killing off Tommy was the death knell. Some of them were the wingnut fringe, the rabid TISAs who started stalking him and sending him death threats and the rest were the silent majority that saw through Tommy's masks to his complexity and read the books because of him, even if Mr. Gemcity didn't ever get it. When Agent Tommy was killed off, there wasn't a reason for either group to stay loyal to the franchise." Ceinwen glanced at his furrowed brow and knew that he still wasn't absolutely sure.

Reaching over and grasping his hand she squeezed it. "Honestly Tony, Carter didn't pull any strings. It was McGee's really dumb move. To put it into context, it would be like Helen Fielding killing off Mr. Darcy in the next Bridget Jones' Diary instalment which she would obviously would never do because it would be a suicidal move. Or that TV show a few years ago with Jessica Alba. Once she got together with the hottie in the wheelchair it was all over Red Rover."

Next up: Tony's return to the Naval Yard and catching up with 'old' friends?

Authors Note: Apologies in advance for the length :(

I don't want to write a novel here in an author's note, but I do want to address a claim that McGee is OOC in the story. First off, his phobia of dogs impacted his ability to do his job. In season X e.18 Seek he panicked, ran away and left Tony without back up, locking himself in the car and preventing his partner access to the vehicle. In fact, Tony would have been badly mauled if the car hadn't possessed a sunroof, which was very luckily open. He didn't apologise but made the excuse that he panicked, which for an experienced federal agent was pathetic. You have an issue like that, you get it fixed before it gets someone killed. His fear of heights also prevented him from being able to collect evidence and Gibbs had to do his job, and then he proceeded to deny that he needed help for the problem.

From day one Tim was arrogant and thought he knew better… refused to listen to advice about poison ivy, annoyed even Abby by flaunting his degrees in people's faces, refused to listen in Toxic… the list goes on and on. As to Tony being nasty to McGee when Cate died… well, Gibbs was being totally OOC too, and Tony had Cate's brain matter splattered over his face after watching her die, so it is understandable that he would be short tempered. He'd also come back a week earlier than he should have from the plague and was clearly unwell, and would have been in pain from taking McGee's place with the car bomb and getting blown up. Which I might point out, neither McGee nor Todd even thanked him for saving their lives… they chose to torture and tease him instead when he was clearly in pain. Contrast that with Tony thanking Tim when he pulled him back over the ledge from the car garage in Leap of Faith. Tony also went with McGee when he finally got up the nerve to go and say goodbye to Cate so he wouldn't be alone.

As to the statement that he is as good a field agent as Tony is now; leaving his partner without back-up occurred during season X along with some other actions that would dispute that assertion. For example, colluding with Ziva to misappropriate government equipment/resources to track Bodnar without authorization and resulted in a Ziva killing an innocent man to avenge her father. In Berlin he tipped off the bad guys that they knew they were being followed. Despite Gibbs ordering him not to look at the car, he acted like a rookie and turned around and rubbernecked at them. And also in season X it seems that his hacking wasn't nearly as surreptitious as he thought if Richard Parsons and DOJ were so well acquainted with it. While back in season 7 he endangered his partner by switching off the comms they were supposed to be monitoring while Tony was trying to track down a terrorist/murderer; something completely against every procedure that even a rookie would know not to do. And even if you want to argue against canon and say it was just them having a joke get back at Tony, I would argue most emphatically that even joking about doing something so egregious and fundamentally wrong is enough to utterly damage the delicate bond/trust that law enforcement individuals require to be able to perform effectively. So I am mystified in what universe any of this makes McGee as good a field agent as Tony. And let's not forget Gibbs' proclamation that, "DiNozzo is the best young agent I've ever worked with."


	6. Chapter 6

Warnings: In keeping with other chapters I need to alert Abby fans that they might not like the content in this chapter and suggest if you are easily offended that you should skip reading this. Although if you are an Abby fan like me (the early Abby of the sass, strength and humour not the whiny, needy Gibbs' clinging limpet that the writers have morphed her into) then you might appreciate the smack down. I found it cathartic :) I really miss the scenes between Ducky and Abby during the first few seasons when the team was away working cases. The Chanel # 5 conversation in Minimum Security was priceless!

Gratuities: As usual I have to thank Arress for wrangling my irritating commas into submission and being a sounding board for the story. You know the rules... any mistakes my bad.

A/N Thanks to everyone who left feedback, faved or alerted. I appreciate your support. Once again I have chosen to reply at the end of the chapter to a "Guest" who felt impelled to leave two rather OTT lot of comments so as not to inflict the "dialogue' upon readers who want to focus on the story.

This chapter is more serious in tone than earlier ones but hopefully will be satisfying in a different way. I know from your feedback that you enjoy confrontation scenes, especially when Tony stands up for himself but I have to say that when it comes down to writing them I find myself procrastinating. Each one that I write renders it more difficult for me to find fresh and interesting ways to present them in a story next time. I now how much greater empathy for the directors who universally bemoan on audio commentaries about how difficult it is to film exposition scenes (the so called meat and potatoes scenes like Autopsy, the Lab and the Bullpen) so that they feel fresh for the actors and viewers. If they and I succeed you'll probably never notice it but if it's tired and trite it's readily apparent to everyone. Why am I sharing this fascinating snippet of information with you all? Because I need to write multiple confrontation scenes in a couple of my stories... and I'm procrastinating :) So at the risk of sounding whiny and needy sharing the love if you like the following confrontation between two of my original fave characters might help with motivation :D

What a Difference a Year Makes:8760 Little Hours

Chapter 6

13 Months Post Rixon Wells Case: Ne'er the Twain Shall Meet…Um…Maybe?

Lieutenant Commander Faith Coleman was hard at work preparing for a court martial the day after tomorrow and she was working on her closing argument. Her mentor when she was just starting out at JAG confided that he always started out by writing his closing remarks before he did anything else and Faith had found that the habit had stuck with her, too. So much so that she often read the last chapter of a book before deciding if the rest of the novel was worthwhile reading which was sometimes confusing, but she couldn't seem to break herself of the habit. Focusing her thoughts back on reading through what she had written in rough draft, the lawyer decided it wasn't bad, but it could do with work. Perhaps a strong cup of java would improve her creativity, so she was equal parts spooked and irritated to find an unauthorized civilian standing brazenly in front of her desk, holding out a cup of coffee.

Belatedly wondering how this guy got past security and wondering if he was a threat she decided to intimidate him. "You're in a restricted area and here without authorization. I could have you arrested and throw away the key."

She glared at the guy, who although ripped, was no muscle bound behemoth. He had a neck, well, actually quite a nice neck and his biceps didn't actually look broad enough to be thighs, just well-defined and strong, and he had long athletic legs rather than tree trunks. As a runner, she didn't go for the Mr. Universe type who was all pumped up gym bulk, which this guy wasn't. Dressed rather scruffily in designer-torn jeans, white t-shirt, leather vest and Ray-Bans, he looked like he was one of the film crew that was shooting this week around the Navy Yard, doing location work apparently. Personally, she found the presence of the film crew extremely irksome and she was peeved that SecNav had approved the shoot.

Rather than intimidating this joker, Faith noted exasperatedly that she hadn't managed to browbeat him at all, but simply succeeded in amusing him if the half smile with his perfect Hollywood teeth was anything to go by. "So when you invited me to stop by the next time I was in the neighbourhood and you'd buy me a coffee, you were what… lying? Surely not… oh, wait, I forgot…lawyer, my bad." The stranger smirked, his British accented voice annoyingly familiar even if she couldn't place it.

Staring at this lunatic, wondering if she needed to activate the panic button under her desk, she noticed that although her rational brain was screaming to raise the alarm, her body had remained unmoved, neither preparing for flight or fight. Staring at the man before her, she wondered if he was a former colleague, yet she couldn't remember anyone in that category who was British.

Seeming to read her mind, the intruder shook his head before pointing under the desk. "Won't do you any good you know. They won't come."

Again Faith considered those words to be highly threatening, yet somehow she didn't feel like she was in danger. Shaking his head in sorrow, he lamented, "And here I was, Faith, going to invite you out to lunch for old time's sake, but it's a case of out of sight out of mind, isn't it? After all the time we spent together. I'm crushed… you don't remember me do you?" he teased her playfully and Faith felt aggravated. Yet, although he could be some sociopath with an axe to grind, her body was telling her he was no threat.

Finally deciding apparently to put her out of her misery, the blonde haired guy tugged at his Ray-Bans while he unleashed a heart-stopping grin as his blues eyes regarded her mischievously. "So, I guess that means your turning down a free lunch, then. Are you sure you're a lawyer, Faith?" he asked her, swapping the British upper class accent for a familiar local one with a well-modulated upper class Long Island inflection.

Looking at the smiling visage that she'd recognize anywhere and trying to reconcile the blue eyes and the blond hair, super tight jeans and the snug t-shirt, she wasn't sure if she was imagining things. "Tony, is that you? Tony DiNozzo?"

"Oh, so you haven't forgotten me," he teased her.

She looked at him, questioningly. "So, what's with the new look anyway, DiNozzo? You undercover, or did you have a makeover or something?"

He laughed. "I guess you could say that, in a manner of speaking. It's for the part I'm playing." He saw her bemused expression. "Anthony Paddington ring a bell? No? Oh, how you wound me, Coleman. I've turned my undercover skills to acting. Surely you noticed the movie that's being shot at the Navy Yard, Ms. Observant?"

"Well, yeah, Tony, it's kinda hard to ignore them all crawling all over the place and disrupting everything. And who is Anthony Paddington?"

Tony laughed. "You're certainly good for keeping my feet on the ground, Lieutenant Commander. It's me, dummy… my stage name."

"Oh… sorry, Tony, but I'm not that into movies these days."

Tony looked at the JAG lawyer's eyes and noticed the dark circles under them, remembering how hard she'd been on herself after the loss of the Rixon Wells case. She was obviously driving herself so she didn't lose another case, and he also knew that she had had a tough time dealing with her best friend, Michelle Lee's, treachery and subsequent death.

"Anyway, Faith, I wanted to invite you to dinner on Saturday night. Going to be a reunion of sorts as Jimmy Palmer is coming and the rest of the NCIS Mafia, Rocky, Cassie, Doc and Nikki. I've got someone special that I want you to meet. So, you'll come, right?"

"Sure, Tony, it'll be good to catch up. You doing okay?" she asked, knowing how he lived for field work.

He grimaced. "Good days… bad days, Faith, and being back here is hard, but some good things have happened, too. Actually, Counselor, apart from issuing you with an invitation, I wanted to ask you for a favour. I want some good to come out of the Carly Weber fiasco and I want some peace for the Webers and for people like you and Doc and me. I'm starting to be paid obscene amounts of money, especially for my next film, and I want to use some of it to do some good. I'm setting up a charitable foundation in Carly's name for drug and alcohol support and education for young service personnel."

Faith smiled at him, "Aren't there plenty of those sorts of services already, Tony?"

"Yeah, but Faith, their stakeholders are civilian teenagers and twenty 'somethings' and their issues are just worlds apart from what kids like Carly Weber face. These military kids, some of them don't even go to college, are too young to vote or drink, but they've been in combat or able to go and fight and die to defend our country. If they're using drugs or alcohol to try to cope, they don't dare to reach out to anyone connected to the military for fear they'll be dishonourably discharged. Carly's foundation will be independent of the military, but specialize in issues that they face in serving their country. And I want Verity and James on the Board as the mouthpieces, and you and Susan to serve, too, as advisors. In fact, I wanted to ask you to set it all up so it's legal and, of course, I'll pay you for your time?"

"Tony, Verity and James aren't doing so good after the trial. James took early retirement from his job and Verity is on antidepressants. It's been a tough 18 months for them."

"Yeah, I know, Faith, I stay in touch with them, and that's why I want them at the forefront of the foundation. They need a purpose and they need some way to memorialize Carly's death. Plus, they need to feel like something good can come out of their loss, so her death wasn't completely meaningless. That's why I want them running the foundation. So what do you say, Faith, are you on board – no pun intended?"

~ What a Difference a Year Makes: 8760 Little Hours ~

Making his way back towards the movie set and his trailer, he was pleased to have Faith on board and not at all surprised that she had offered to do the legal work gratis. It wasn't that he couldn't afford to pay a lawyer to do the work, but he knew from his contacts at JAG that Faith Coleman had been on a concerted campaign of self-flagellation in the last year and a bit. Scuttlebutt was that she was reaching the point of burn out and was over-preparing for even the simplest of cases. She'd refused to eat lunch with him because she had a case to prepare for.

Tony thought that she needed something positive to focus on just as much as the Webers did, and he hoped that this foundation would help her to find some peace and purpose. Faith, in all the time he'd known the JAG attorney, had always been lean with the body of a long distance runner, but now she was looking positively skeletal and unhealthy, her eyes dull and skin sallow. Knowing that she wouldn't take time off to rest, Tony hoped that she might take some leave and work for the foundation. He was hoping in her case that the tried and true maxim that a change was as good as a holiday would hold true for Coleman. Mentally running through his checklist, he wasn't paying attention to where he was going and ran into someone, knocking their lunch out of their hands.

As he started to apologise, he glanced up and groaned. Staring at him wide eyed was a certain Goth forensic scientist except that she was sans the Gothic accoutrements and unlike Faith, she recognized him immediately.

"OMG, Tony? Is that really you? Please, can we talk… I'd really, really like to talk… it's been so long… not that I blame you or anything …it was totally my fault, but please… I just want to…"

Tony tuned her out as he tried to rally his composure. He'd heard about her 'act of contrition' in giving up her Goth accessories and her continuing tension with the MCRT team. Nikki and Balboa had filled him in and he'd decided that he would reach out to her while they were shooting on location, but he'd been procrastinating. Now it was time to take the bull by the horns, or more pertinently, take the Goth by the collar.

"Abby…stop! Okay, first off, I'm sorry about running into you. Let me get you some lunch and then we'll talk. I've been meaning to contact you so we could have tête-à-tête, but I guess you've saved me the effort. C'mon."

He strode off after checking to see that she was following him and they headed to the catering tent that was still serving a buffet for the crew. Tony snagged two plates and started to grab some food for them both before crooking his finger, indicating she should follow him back to his trailer, because he didn't want to have this conversation in public. He knew that this was inevitable. People had been dropping by all week to say hi, offer congratulations, rubber neck or, in a few cases, to sneer at him for proving just how narcissistic he really was.

Although, perhaps the most bizarre blow-in of the week would have to have been Timothy McGee. It seemed that he had certainly taken to heart, Gibbs rule #6, since he offered no sign of regret or apology. Instead, McGee confided that he was soon going to be joining the movie industry and thought that Tony could introduce him to 'the right people' and give him some tips. Tony had pretty much given him the brush off, feeling like it was too surreal and just too much like Senior. It seemed McGee had thought that he'd just forget any past transgressions, although he guessed to be fair, he always had before. Then there was the fact that he was the one buying the film rights to Deep Six, in order to make sure that it never saw the light of day.

Entering the trailer and motioning Abby to take a seat, he dropped onto the sofa beside Ceinwen and dropped a kiss on her cheek. "Ceinwen, this is Abby Scuito, Abby this is my publicist, Ceinwen Davies."

Ceinwen smiled at Abby, but Tony knew that it was her plastic, professional one, and her gaze searched his to see how he was coping. "Did you see Faith, Tony?"

"Yeah, she's on board. Just need to recruit Susan."

She smiled at him, but it was the special one that she reserved for him and there was nothing professional or plastic about it. "That's great. I'm might go and grab some lunch, unless you need me to hang around?"

"No thanks Lovely; go and get some lunch. They've got bread and butter pudding," he teased, reaching out and squeezing her hand as she stood up.

"Oh, wow, gotta go. Bye, Abby, nice to meet you." And she raced out of the trailer.

Tony glanced at Abby. "It's one of her favourites. Memories of her childhood in England I guess. Ceinwen is half English," he explained with a shrug.

"Like you! I guess you must have a lot in common?" Abby asked tentatively.

_More than you could imagine, "_Yeah, you could say that." He said, noncommittally.

Finally after an awkward silence where Abby chewed alternatively on her bottom lip and her left cheek she finally spoke. "Why did you want to talk, Tony?"

He sighed, wondering how to say what he needed to and still move towards offering some ground for her contrition. Deciding that being up front with her was probably best he could offer, he shrugged.

"Abby, I'm not sure exactly. I guess because even though I'm still mad at you, I wanted to acknowledge that you did have the guts to apologise and that you have continued to show 'contrition' and that does count for something. So… um… thank you."

Tony saw the disappointment in her eyes.

"You're never going to be able to forgive me, are you?"

He shrugged because he wouldn't make promises he couldn't keep. "In all honesty, I don't know whether I can, Abby."

"But, Tony, we were best friends…more than that, we were family. I know I did something terrible, something unforgivable, but I know you. You always forgive your family even when we don't deserve it. And I'm so sorry I hurt you, but everyone deserves a second chance, don't they?" She begged, staring at him with big wet eyes.

He considered what she'd said, wondering how she could be so smart and yet so dumb at the same time. "What you say is probably all pretty true, Abby, but the bottom line is that I've already given you plenty of second chances and you never seemed to realize it. Maybe if I hadn't been so quick to absolve you and held you accountable, we might not be having this conversation."

"How can you say that, Tony, it's so not true! I've always had your back."

"Z'at so, Abby? You had my back when you superimposed my face onto a leather clad photo of a clearly gay couple that could have easily gotten me fired. Or when I was trying to keep the team from being split up, you had my back even as you were telling me I wasn't Gibbs when I tried to maintain continuity like when he was here? You even slapped a damned trainee sticker on me to let me know that I wasn't really up to the job, even though I had the training and experience and earned the damned promotion through blood, sweat and tears. How would you have liked it if someone had done that to you when you took over the lab, Abby?" He looked at her downcast expression, but didn't back down.

"Every promotion means you are replacing someone, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Not as if it was the first time, hey, Abs. Although Cate and McGee were treated like siblings – well, maybe not McGee since ya shared a coffin with him and that would be… well incestuous. But you treated me like shit when I started at NCIS because I replaced your precious Stan Burley, and hey he was just perfect, as you all enjoyed telling me repeatedly. But I digress because we were talking about me replacing Gibbs, even though I didn't want the damn job. And then when I tried to do things differently coz I could never measure up to the great Jethro Gibbs, as you'd all been at great pains to convince me of, then you all complained bitterly that Gibbs wouldn't do it that way. I couldn't win no matter what I did. The team was insubordinate and accusing me of being arrogant, but I had to carry the can if things went wrong as I was in charge. I wasn't the one that refused to follow orders or at the very least questioned them constantly. I could have written you all up for the way you behaved, but I didn't. I kept on giving you all chances and you all kept on abusing me and the position."

Abby gulped audibly before looking into the stony blue eyes of the former senior field agent and stuttered, "I'm s…sorry, Tony. I never looked at it f… from your perspective."

Instead of mollifying him, the interjection just seemed to make him angrier. "What about when the almighty Gibbs came back and took back the team without a word of warning or thanks, threw all my stuff in a box and dumped it on McGee's desk as his delightful method of announcing that the team he'd told me was mine, wasn't anymore? How would you feel, Abs, after making the lab your own and making your babies jump through hoops and do their magic for you if the forensic scientist that had your job before you came back? What if they threw you out of the lab or made you their assistant and didn't even bother to tell you, just cleaned out your office so when you turned up with your subordinates, you looked like the biggest loser on the planet? And in his haste to make sure I knew I wasn't top dog, Gibbs treated me like a piece of excrement on his shoes. Where were you then, 'cause you sure didn't have my back? You all let him, Hell, you all joined in, too, and had a great old time. By the time you were done, I was convinced I was such a crappy leader that I turned down my own team in Rota, because why would strangers follow my lead if my friends, my family couldn't?"

Abby looked shocked at Tony's revelations and opened her mouth to say something before deciding at the last minute that silence might be the wisest course of action, since she could sense he wasn't done yet.

"When you found out I'd spent a year under cover, been ordered to lie to you all, fallen in love with Jeanne because she had my back and saw the real me unlike my team mates and when it came crashing down, instead of being there for me, you all punished me for doing my job and following orders. No wonder that I made the biggest mistake of my life and fell head over heels for the daughter of a drug dealer. She made me feel like I wasn't a total failure; she enjoyed spending time with me, made me feel like I actually mattered. I used to help her study for her medical exams and she never told me I was too dumb to understand. She made me feel like I mattered."

Tony closed his eyes, trying to push aside the regrets and pain that he always felt when he thought of Jeanne. Even though she had tried to set him up for murdering her father, he still felt like he was partly responsible. If he'd tried to protect him he might not have ended up as a floater, but he'd been so incensed to discover that his undercover mission was Shepard's personal Moby Dick that he'd washed his hands of the whole sordid mess. He'd let Jeanne down!

Focusing on Abby again, he returned to the point. "But you at least stayed in touch with me when I was banished as agent afloat and you apologised for the Rixon Wells fiasco, so I'm willing to try to get past it all. I just can't promise that I can forgive or forget ,and if I do manage to, when. All I can promise is that I will try!" He looked at the forensic scientist seeing her lip tremble and her eyes water and once upon a time he would have caved in and rushed to make her feel better, subjugating his own needs as irrelevant. But it was more than a year away from the toxic environment of his former team and he strengthened his resolve. He couldn't say it was easy, but he hardened his heart and told himself if he'd refused be a doormat right from the get go, maybe they wouldn't have treated him like a piece of crap.

After an awkward silence that stretched for five agonizing minutes as she considered everything he had said, Abby finally nodded. "I know I don't deserve it, but I would like us to be friends again someday, Tony. You're right of course, I wasn't a good friend and I didn't have your back. If I had, I would have been able to put myself in your shoes and I would have done things a lot different." She sighed realizing it was going to take a lot more than an apology to fix everything between them. Changing the subject she asked, "Have you talked to anyone else on the team, Tony?"

Tony smirked. "Oh yeah, Thom E. Gemcity rocked up wanting me to introduce him to some Hollywood moguls. I think he overestimates my importance on the totem pole and underestimates my animosity for his behaviour. I sent him away with a flea in his ear and he was highly aggrieved, especially after I got pissed off with his sudden abject if belated, and totally insincere, apology. Like I said, Abby, you bought yourself some credit in being genuine and you've expressed regret publicly. That counts for something. Doesn't absolve you, but still…"

He smiled sadly before continuing. "And last month Ceinwen and I went to dinner with Ducky in London. Like my relationship with you, I'm trying to move past all the hurt and anger, but it isn't like flicking a switch. If anything it actually hurts even more with you and Ducky… and Gibbs," He finished sotte voce so that Abby almost thought she imagined the reference to Gibbs.

"You sound pretty close to Ceinwen?" she asked tentatively.

He smiled broadly. "Yeah, she's my best friend," he admitted, although he wasn't going to admit they were seeing each other.

"Oh… I'm glad." She managed, somewhat pathetically, no doubt thinking that that description would have once been hers to claim before she threw it all away. "Are you planning on talking to Gibbs? He really misses you, even if he'll never admit it."

Tony shook his head, "No, I'm not." He didn't bother telling her that he'd noticed both Gibbs and Vance had been shadowing him at various times during the last couple of days of the location shoot. He was contemplating turning the tables on them both, but he wasn't sure if he should bother.

Seeing that Abby was going to try and persuade him to reconcile with Gibbs, he decided to be honest with her. "Abby, before you go off half- cocked with your Papa Bear and we're all one big happy family analogy, just stop. I don't want to hear it!"

"But it's the truth, even if I am… well, both of us are angry with him right now."

Tony shook his head. "I realise that you grew up trying to straddle two very different worlds; the consequence being that you ended up feeling like you never truly fit into the deaf or hearing communities. I get that you and Luka were forced to communicate for your parents in the hearing world, I do, and I get that was hard for a couple of kids. So, feeling like you belong somewhere, where you have family, is important to you and you've tried to create a perfect family where you feel like you truly fit in. The trouble with that is there's no such thing as the perfect family, but you've created this little fantasy world where we were all your perfect family. Where I was your brother and Gibbs was your father and Ducky was your pappy and Ziva and Cate were your sisters and Tim was your… um, not sure since if he was your brother or your cousin, well, that would be like in-breeding. So maybe McGee was your kissing cousin, but anyway, I get it. Well, okay not McGee, but I get the desire to have a picture perfect family, I really do."

He gazed into the middle distance as he considered the painful subject of family before continuing. "I know what it feels like not to fit in anywhere… but at least you knew that you were loved and wanted even if it wasn't all rainbows and lollypops, Abs. But your desperate need for us to be one big happy family is a delusion. And although I admit that more than anyone I've wished you were my family many times in the past, it is just a childish fantasy."

Abby opened her mouth to protest at the blasphemy that her former best friend was sprouting, but Tony forestalled her.

"C'mon Abby, you're almost the same age as me, even if it isn't gallant of me to point it out, so you're not a little girl anymore, even if you dress like one. Your Pollyanna persona has worn really thin with me, I'm afraid. Even Pollyanna realized when she grew up and became an adult that it wasn't okay to harass people. Interfering with her friends and telling them all how lucky they were and be glad for what they had might be cute, even effective when she was a little girl, but when she grew up it was interfering, sanctimonious preaching, and she toned it down or kept her opinions to herself."

~ What a Difference a Day Makes: 8760 Little Hours ~

"You really told Abby she was sanctimonious, interfering and preachy, Tony?" Ceinwen looked at him astonished.

"No, I said that her behaviour was, Lovely. Big diff, doofus!" Tony said half-seriously. He felt equal parts guilty and euphoric after he'd had a heart to heart and shared some home truths with the NCIS forensic scientist. Still, he wondered if he'd gone in too hard too fast. He pulled out his cell phone to call his old friend, Nikki Jardine, and ask her to go and make sure Abby was okay, since he didn't think that she and Gibbs were all that tight right now.

Ceinwen knew that he was probably second guessing his forthrightness and she decided to distract him by leaping on him and tickling him unmercifully. He was especially sensitive on his tummy she'd discovered and they ended up wrestling around playfully before they laughed themselves silly.

Finally, lying breathless on the sofa together in Tony's hotel room, Tony looked at his partner and poked her with his index finger. "What the Hell was that for, anyway?" He pouted playfully.

She smiled sweetly at him. "You called me a doofus!"

"Tony," Ceinwen said as they were drifting off to sleep. "How did you come to be such an expert on Pollyana?" She asked tentatively, knowing that he was intensely private about his childhood. Looking across at him, she saw him smile but it was such a sad one that she wished she hadn't asked.

"It's okay, forget I said anything."

"I don't remember very many occasions when my mum (yeah she hated being called mom) was actually sober." He responded as though she hadn't spoken. "Even when we went to the movies just the two of us, which was my happiest memories of us together, she was never completely sober. I was eight when she died and I thought it was my fault… aw, Hell, on some level I still feel like it was… if I had hidden the pills better or managed to get rid of the booze she might still be alive. After she died, I used to creep into her room and go through her stuff to try and get to know her… you know?"

He paused, staring off into space pensively and Ceinwen thought he was finished. She cursed his parents for the burden they had inflicted upon an innocent little boy.

Finally he spoke again. "My mum had kept all her childhood books and I thought if I read them, I would get to know what she was like as a kid. So I read all the Louisa May Alcott books, the Anne of Green Gables series, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, P.L Travers books, The Famous Five and the Pollyanna books. I found her journals and I read those, too, but I never found out why I wasn't enough for her to go and get help for her addictions. I guess I believed my father when he told me I was weak and useless and would never amount to anything. Irony much that he now thinks I'm a success?" he chuckled bitterly.

As she snuggled into him and held him tight, she marveled at how he'd managed to rear himself so well and still care so much about other people.

As Tony surrendered to her loving embrace, he marveled at how lucky he was to have found Ceinwen. She was perceptive enough to know when words just didn't cut it and a hug was what he needed, even if he didn't. Rather than making him feel claustrophobic, she made him feel safe and accepted… a wholly novel experience, but one he decided he could easily become addicted to. They were still to take the final step in their burgeoning relationship of being intimate, but they were extremely demonstrative with each other and Tony was enjoying the closeness that they had developed. He wasn't used to snuggling since he'd never had that sort of relationship as a child, but somehow with Ceinwen it felt so right.

Next up: Part 2 of Ne'er the Twain Shall Me

Endnotes:

To the "Guest" who demanded to know the episode where Gibbs declared that Tony was the best young agent he'd ever worked with, it was in S7 E 12 Flesh. And the claim that Ziva and McGee weren't doing anything wrong because Vance and Gibbs both knew what they were doing... this this is precisely why I am so scathing about the whole revenge story line in the show. If you think that just because Gibbs and Vance choose to look the other way to the illegal activities that Ziva and McGee engaged in in tracking Bodnar, in any way made their actions less wrong legally/morally/ethically because of their superiors failure to do their job, you are sadly mistaken. In the real world, McGee and Ziva would be held to account for what they did and Gibbs and Vance would be culpable too.

And as to the outlandish statement that Tony should have been jailed for killing Michael Rivkin. Really? Because Rivkin in acting on US soil as an agent of a foreign national Intelligence agency was doing so completely illegally. He'd been directed numerous times to leave the country after assassinating two suspects. When Tony attempted to arrest him on suspicion for the death of ICE Agent Sherman, Rivkin resisted arrest and did so with extreme violence and then when he was warned to stand down and threatened DiNozzo with a deadly weapon (not forgetting he was a highly trained assassin.) Rivkin chose suicide by cop like any other dirtbag that the MCRT shoot resisting arrest. It is completely immaterial that he was Ziva's friend and ludicrous to even suggest that DiNozzo did anything illegal.


	7. Chapter 7

Warnings: Mm I guess I'd better warn any Leon Vance fans out there that this chapter could offend. Aw what the heck... unless you are a Tony fan don't bother reading. Seriously, have to wonder why people who are clearly Tony haters would waste their time and mine complaining about this story, especially as it is clearly marked as Tony-centric. Don't mind objective criticism but the inane and inaccurate, non-canonical and also non factual claims frankly leave me tearing my hair out. Thanks to the rational reviewers who eloquently explained why DiNozzo's self defense during his attempt to arrest Rivkin was in no way unlawful and was in fact, entirely justifiable. The only problem with such explanations is that despite you both clearly possessing first hand knowledge of the law, I'm almost certain that some people will refuse to accept facts because it threatens their long held prejudices, I guess like some people persist in believing that the earth is flat. While I feel I have been pretty patient, I'm giving fair warning to serial pests that sending whinging comments repeating the same tired old complaints about mean Tony that you've sent to me before and frankly you can't substantiate will now be deleted immediately. I suggest instead, you direct your energies into writing your own fan fictions.

Gratuities: As usual I have to thank Arress for wrangling my irritating commas into submission and being a sounding board for the story. This chapter and the next are much indebted to my beta for her suggestions and support. I ended up seriously unable to write and in the end was forced to turn to a short story just to get things flowing again. Arress' assistance got me back on track so sorry for the delay but without her help this chapter would have taken a lot longer. Oh yeah and you all know the rules...any mistakes my bad.

A/N Thanks to everyone who left feedback, faved or alerted. I appreciate your support. I think I've said before that writing is a very solitary past time although I guess in some ways the characters in my stories end up becoming real the longer I spend with them (and yeah that does sounds a little creepy). Anyway... feedback is like oxygen to a writer. So thanks again for everyone who takes the time and effort to actually leave feedback for me even if it is just a couple of words. I especially love when someone zeros in on a little gem I've placed into the chapter and someone lets me know that it was noticed and appreciated.

FYI the next chapter is the long anticipated 'chat' between Gibbs and Tony. Hope you enjoy :)

What a Difference a Year Makes: 8760 Little Hours

Chapter 7 Ne'er the Twain Shall Meet… Well, maybe Part 2

As they moved agilely across the running path that wove it's way along the Anacostia River running in tandem, the partners moved in harmony, although Tony had to alter his stride to match his handler's, shortening it quite a bit since at six two his legs were much longer than Ceinwen's five foot seven and a half inches. They ran to keep in shape obviously, but with Tony's upcoming role in the remake of Magnum P.I., the producers wanted him to bulk up a bit for the role, and so they had hired a personal trainer to supervise his training regimen. But Tony also ran because often times on the set there was a Hell of a lot of hurry up and wait, and even though he tried to do as much of the less dangerous stunts as they would allow him to, he was quite frequently bored. Running had always been a panacea to him ever since college, when he ran to stay in peak physical condition and it helped him relax when he was stressed or helped him to think. Now he went running with Ceinwen as a way of combating the boredom that he was experiencing in not investigating crime anymore.

Running and a rigorous exercise regime weren't the only strategies Tony had in place to keep his active brain busy enough so he didn't go stir crazy. He was learning to play the oboe and the mandolin, and his handler was tutoring him in French and German. He had plans to learn Indonesian, Farsi and Arabic after he became fluent in the romance languages, and had also had a word with a Metro PD homicide detective who he'd work with years before in Philly, and he'd agreed to let him have access to their cold case files as a consultant to see if he could give them some fresh leads on cases that had been declared not just cold but positively arctic. It wasn't the same as chasing leads and running down dirtbags, but it was better than nothing, and at least he felt like he was helping victims' families to find some answers. In the last year they'd already cleared 13 cases where there had been no expectation of being solved, and there were also strong prospects for arrests in another four cases. He knew that in time his Intelligence role would step up the pace as his movie profile grew, but in the meantime he needed to stay busy or drive himself and Ceinwen crazy.

As they ran along the running track that was familiar to him, Tony reflected on how grateful he was to have his handler by his side as he dealt with the stress of returning to his old stomping grounds. She was helping him to stay focused on remaining undercover in his new role as superficial, narcissistic actor. He knew that many people would say that there wasn't any difference between his real identity and his new undercover persona, but in some ways the similarities made it trickier than playing someone who was dramatically different. She was doing a great job of keeping him grounded and sane. Looking across at her as they ran she grinned at him when Matt the trainer yelled at them that they were taking a break in five to do some abdominal exercises.

Tony grimaced at her, "Tell me again, Lovely, why we had to hire him, hey?"

She smirked at him. "The producers want you bulk up a bit, Babe, and besides, you need to start collecting an entourage even with your athletics background. Besides, he's easy on the eye," she smirked, teasing him playfully. "What's wrong with a bit of eye candy, anyway?"

He snorted, wondering if she was being facetious or was just a bit clueless. "Hey, Babe, you do realise that Matt doesn't play with girls, don't'cha?"

"Tony, I'll have you know that Matt checks me out all the time."

"Trust me, Ceinwen, he's admiring your designer labels, not what's in inside the clothes, either that or he's admiring your muscle definition," he smirked.

She pouted, "Don't tell me you're jealous, Babe, 'cause otherwise I'd have to conclude that you are falling for stereotypes that all muscle bound gym junkies are gay and you aren't a bigot."

He smiled at her adoringly. "Who wouldn't be jealous of guys checking you out, Lovely? Have to be crazy not to worry that someone as gorgeous as you isn't going to be the object of lust and desire. It's just that this particular personal trainer just happens to be gay – he told me when I hired him," he confessed, amused.

"Okay, how did I miss that?" She mused aloud. "Well, I guess that explains a few things, Tony. Matt's not checking out your muscle definition when he watches your butt, I guess."

"Oh eww, Babe, I did not want to know that." He looked over his shoulder to make sure Matt wasn't ogling him and when he turned back Ceinwen noticed he had a steely-eyed expression that she'd learnt meant he was angry.

"Tony, what's up? They back again?" He nodded wordlessly, his lips pinched. "Gibbs or Vance?"

"The Toothpick," he growled.

"Any idea why their shadowing you?" she asked curiously.

Tony shook his head then smiled slowly as something occurred to him. "Well… he might be a touch pissed with me after Jackie Vance and the fruit of his loins came to visit on the set the other day. I signed a couple of autographs for Kayla and Jarred and showed them around the set, and I let them watch filming and run amok in the catering tent." His eyes glinted with merriment.

Ceinwen shook her head, despairingly. "O-kay… so why does Vance want to shoot you now, Sweet Pea?"

Grinning wickedly, he confessed, "Well, Jackie might have invited me, um, us to dinner while we're in town." He said innocently, grinning what she had labelled his cherub smile that looked as if he was as pure as the driven snow when nothing could be further from the truth.

Giggling, she raised her eyebrows. "Tell me you didn't accept the invite, please, Babe!"

Looking shocked he shook his head emphatically. "Bite your tongue, wench! How could you even ask me that? I'd rather rip out my eyeballs and suck on them before I'd eat at Director Dumb-ass' table, pinkie swear!"

"So… why's he so mad then, Tony?" She asked, knowing he'd done or said something that would get up Leon Vance's nose.

Chuckling he tried to look virtuous. "Well… see… I might have said that we were busy attending fundraisers while we were here and I might have sort of led them to think that since the Director had agreed to sponsor a table at the black tie dinner for the Carlie Weber Foundation, and that I was sure it would be fine if Jarred and Kayla came with their mom and dad and I'd see them all there."

His handler looked delighted. "Vance is sponsoring a table…really? That's great. You never told me that he agreed to that, Tony."

He looked a bit sheepish, but mostly mischievous. "Yeah...well technically, Lovely, he hasn't exactly agreed… not yet anyway. But I have a strong feeling that he'll be handing over ten grand real soon. That's probably why he wants to have a word with me… or maybe he just plans to shoot me." He sniggered.

Realisation dawning, she giggled delightedly. "To quote the fabulous John Inman – you are awful but I like you," She declared seeing his confusion. "Classic British sitcom from the 1970's called Are You Being Served. Sort of in the vein of the Carry On movies," She explained. Seeing the blank look, she shook her head pityingly. "Oh, Baby, your education is sadly lacking, especially for someone who has dual American/English citizenship. I'm going to get all of the classic British situational comedies and we are going to have a marathon."

Tony shrugged, he was hardly going to object to curling up on the couch with Ceinwen watching DVDs, and he figured that it would be a good thing to get in touch with his English roots. Besides, when it came to comedy, the Poms came up with great ideas and the Americans bought the rights and made pale imitations of the original shows. They were always much more prudish when it came to humour, too. The Carry On films were good examples of how much smuttier the Brits were, if the two he'd seen were anything to go by. While the sitcoms in America still had Lucy and Desi sleeping in twin beds, the Carry On movies were infinitely more risqué and rife with sexual innuendo.

As they stopped running to go through the next set of sit ups and push ups, Ceinwen glanced at the rather obvious figure shadowing them. "Okay, so if Vance is pissed with you for making him fork over 10 G's so he doesn't lose face with his wife and kids, what's Gibbs' problem? Did you put him down for sponsoring a table, too?"

Tony shook his head. "Nope…trust me, Hun, he wouldn't come and you wouldn't want him there, either. Gibbs doesn't play nice with others or kiss ass well. That's what he kept me around for." He finished, bitterly.

"Okay, so then why is he following you around like a puppy?" She asked, concerned.

Frown lines furrowed his brow as he considered the situation. "Don't really know, Babe. Except that Gibbs is a predator. He's an alpha wolf, if you pardon the analogy, and I pissed him off by leaving his pack without his permission. He wants to be the one to kick them out of his pack. In his mind, I guess he figures that I challenged him and now that I'm back, maybe he's feeling territorial."

Tony's handler frowned, trying to understand. "So what…you're saying he's wandering all over the Naval Yard, pissing on everything to warn you off because your presence here is threatening him?" She asked incredulously.

"Dunno…maybe? It makes more sense than Gibbs is star struck, doesn't it?"

"So, what now…keep on ignoring them and hope that they go away?" She asked, noting his bolshie expression with a degree of trepidation. Tony had a plan and he smiled at her and Ceinwen saw a wicked gleam in his expressive eyes. "What are you up to, Tony?"

"Shadow the shadowers, if that is even a word, Lovely, and turn the tables on them," He revealed, smiling as he formulated his strategy.

His handler didn't look anywhere near as excited about the prospect of confronting the pair. As far as she was concerned they were both bullies who enjoyed abusing the power that they held so they could make other people feel bad. She knew that Tony could look after himself physically, but this pair had the potential to upset his emotional equilibrium, Gibbs especially. He had a conflicted reaction to authority figures, yet for some reason Tony also seemed to care about what Gibbs thought of him, far more than what was healthy for him. Frankly, she blamed Tony's bastard of a father for the emotional abuse he'd practised as he poisoned his body and his family with alcohol along with Tony's mind and emotions during Tony's childhood.

If he'd felt that he was good enough or even loved as a child, he would never have seen Gibbs' abusive grudging attention as something to be strived for. As far as she was concerned, it was no coincidence that Tony had chosen as his former mentor, a man who was emotionally remote, had difficulty establishing and maintaining relationships after the death of his first wife, and had unattainable standards and expectations for his subordinates. The fact that he was also engaged in emotional bullying, believed that positive reinforcement was the devil's work, and that expressing emotions were nothing short of weakness undoubted attracted Tony because of the familiarity factor. She'd noticed that kindness and compassion embarrassed and confused Tony since he distrusted gentleness as coming too easy and, therefore, it must be insincere.

~ What a Difference a Year Makes: 8760 Little Hours ~

Several days later, as they ran along the picturesque running path again, Ceinwen flicked a quick glimpse behind them. "He's back, Tony." She hissed.

Not turning around or slowing down, he asked "Which one?"

Grinning as she matched his stride knowing he was shortening his so that they could run in tandem. "Director Toothpick," She confirmed, using Tony's nickname for Leon Vance, who apparently had the unfortunate oral fixation of chewing on toothpicks. Seriously, were all of the people working at that agency deranged?

Nodding, Tony had reached for his phone and spoke softly into it. "Yeah Jake, it's on. Meet you near the amenities block in ten. Thanks, man, appreciate it." Hanging up, he smiled at his partner." It's a go in ten, Lovely. You good to go?" He asked playfully.

Rolling her eyes, theatrically she smiled back at him. "Yeah, I think I can pull this off, Babe."

Nodding, he grabbed her hand to give it a squeeze, because as much as he hadn't been much of a touchy feely sort of guy, for some reason he couldn't seem to get enough when it came to Ceinwen. Stopping suddenly, he grabbed her around the waist and hauled her in before twisting her around so they faced each other going in for a kiss. When they finally caught their breath and separated, she giggled girlishly. "What was that for? Not that I'm complaining."

Shrugging he smiled at her with the shy genuine smile that melted her heart, not the over the top one he used to hide behind. "Felt like it." Pulling her in close again her whispered in her ear, "Just don't get too into character, okay?"

Chuckling at his obvious conflicted feelings, she whispered sweetly. "Pale imitation, Tony. Don't worry." She glanced at Matt their personal trainer who was running in place and staring out at the Anacostia river, giving them a semblance of privacy while they were lipped locked. "Okay, guys, race you to the amenities block," she called before taking off, hoping that her unfair advantage would compensate for their longer legs.

Grinning at Matt, Tony set off chasing his partner, yelling good-natured insults about cheating and karma as he chased her down, but not trying too hard. That was something that he appreciated about Ceinwen, she wasn't obsessed with being the best all the time. Whether it was work or play, she was comfortable enough in her own abilities that she didn't need to one up him constantly, unlike his previous female partners had needed to. Not surprisingly, he found himself trusting her to watch his back far more than Ziva or Cate, simply because he knew that she regarded backing him up wasn't just another opportunity to prove that she was better than he was. Even before they had gotten together, he felt comfortable knowing that she trusted him to watch her back, and that trust meant the world to him. Somehow they complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, and there was no need for them to compete professionally.

As he reached the toilet block a few seconds after she did he called to her. "Need to take care of business, Lovely." He disappeared inside and Ceinwen and Matt hung around, chatting while they waited.

~ What a Difference a Day Makes: 8760 Little Hours ~

Leon Vance watched as DiNozzo ran along the exercise path with his publicist, who if the make out session he'd just witnessed was anything to go by, was also the latest in a long line of girlfriends. The man was a serial dater, but it a bit clichéd to be dating your publicist, even for DiNozzo, although she was an extremely attractive woman. As he followed them and the personal trainer, who seemed to follow them around like a puppy, a part of him recognised that this was crazy. Apart from it being incredibly unseemly for the Director of NCIS to be following some two-bit actor who was a former federal agent, but Leon found he'd become obsessed with DiNozzo. At first he'd been ecstatic when he'd resigned, thinking that the agency would benefit from his departure, but now he'd do anything to be able to lure the man back onto the payroll again.

When he'd learnt that the former agent was going to be coming back to the Naval Yard to shoot a movie, he'd decided that the opportunity was too good to waste, that if he played his cards right, he could maybe entice the man into coming back again, maybe as a consultant… he figured he could get SecNav to sign off on the plan by pointing out the excellent publicity it would generate. He knew that Davenport was a media whore who was using the SecNav job as a stepping stone, and that he'd jump at anything that gave them good publicity. Vance had decided that if he had any chance to fix up the mess that the last year had wrought upon the agency, then DiNozzo's presence was a must. The problem was that Leon couldn't figure out how to get him to agree to come back to the fold. So, he found himself following him around the Navy Yard like some crazy-assed celebrity stalker hoping that he'd find inspiration, or more likely, divine intervention.

Of course, saner individuals would probably question why he didn't just come out and ask him straight out to return to the fold, but with his career hanging on the success of him pulling off this coup, at least in his mind, he knew it wasn't going to be that simple. To say that he and DiNozzo hadn't exactly hit it off was not an exaggeration. Truth be told, he found the juvenile, arrogant agent…ex-agent, to be extremely aggravating and he'd always considered that the man didn't take the job seriously. Frankly, he'd decided as someone born into a life of wealth and privilege, DiNozzo had probably bought his way into the position anyway.

No doubt, he'd never had to fight for anything in his life and had things handed to him on a silver platter while Leon had fought tooth and nail to get where he was today. And even when he'd been viewed as an expendable black man and sent on what was supposed to be a suicide mission, he'd managed to grasp the opportunity with both hands and turn it to his advantage. So, when he saw the way that DiNozzo mucked around in the bull pen and his utter disdain for authority, including him, he'd taken an immediate dislike to the man. He had to admit that he still found him personally abhorrent, but he could no longer argue that his influence upon not just his former team, but the whole agency, had been a surprise. And as much as it pained Vance to admit it, the effect had been highly beneficial, if his analysts and pencils pushers were to be believed. If there was one thing that Vance put his trust in, it was hard data and statistics, when coupled with the highly skilled analyses of his computer geeks.

Vance knew that he was a step away from the end of his political career, either at his own hand, or because he was rapidly losing what little credibility he still had with SecNav in turning around the mess that the Agency found itself in. He'd been tasked with cleaning up the agency in the wake of the La Grenouille and Oshimida/Decker fiascos, not to mention the whole Michelle Lee/Brett Langer mole mess, but then to add insult to injury, the last 13 or so months had been a nightmare and his time was running out. So, having identified a possible solution to many of the motivational ills that dogged the agency, and having it within his grasp, he was faltering about how to achieve it. Sure, it was dumb to be running around following DiNozzo and his girlfriend, but he couldn't seem to help himself, although he comforted himself with the knowledge that Gibbs was equally as pathetic. He'd noticed the lead agent of the MCRT team following the DiNozzo entourage, too.

Realising how foolish it might be if anyone ever found out, Vance would drop off his stalking patrol if he caught sight of Gibbs, but he wondered what Jethro's excuse was. Did he want to convince DiNozzo to come back to NCIS, too? Maybe they should start working as a team to achieve that end, even if they had become sworn enemies in the wake of DiNozzo's resignation. Leon Vance was nothing if not a pragmatist and he could work with unfriendlies, if it meant he got what he wanted. He really didn't want to leave NCIS under a cloud. He wanted to leave the agency because he had earned a promotion, maybe getting a step up the ladder like Morrow who got to play with the big boys, but ultimately he had always planned to be Secretary of the Navy before having a tilt at the Hill. Now, that ambition was looking increasingly like a pipe dream, and Vance watched as DiNozzo ducked into the head, obviously needing to take a leak.

As he took cover behind an 80-year-old oak tree, one of several that graced the banks of the river, he castigated himself for his outlandish behaviour. How would it look if anyone saw him, the Director of a federal agency, behaving like a teenage girl following around some pathetic minor star. As if his credibility wasn't already shot to Hell. Yet, when DiNozzo emerged from the head shaking his hands to dry them, Leon, after glancing around guiltily, set off after his quarry and his entourage once again.

Knowing that he was going to have to stop his demented shadowing fairly soon, or Cynthia was going to send a search party after him if he didn't return from lunch, he told himself he'd follow for just another five minutes more. He'd told everyone he was running on medical advice, which wasn't exactly a lie because ever since he'd parked his ass in the big chair, his blood pressure had shot through the roof. His beloved Jackie had put him on a low-sodium, low-fat diet, but that didn't mean he could take two hours in the middle of the day to run without it being considered strange behaviour and causing scuttlebutt to run rife. Honestly, the Navy Yard was already a hot bed of intrigue and speculation, so he didn't need to be contributing, especially if someone put two and two together.

Damn it to Hell, if he could find some way of getting DiNozzo on his own, he could talk to the man, who along with Gibbs, had made his life unbearable. He wasn't sure which one he hated most – they almost surpassed his hatred for Agents Riley McCallister and Whitney Sharp, although not quite since he would never forgive those assholes for sending him on that suicide mission when he was just a clueless computer geek at the Naval Academy. Scowling at the memory of what was supposed to be the shortest Intelligence career on record, he leaped high in the air at a familiar voice behind him.

"Long time no see, Leon. How's the family today?"

Spinning on his heels he found himself staring into the familiar features of the former senior field agent of the MCRT, who was not supposed to be sneaking up behind him since he was ahead of him, wasn't he? Granted he'd let them forge ahead so that he wasn't so obvious, but that didn't explain how DiNozzo had managed to sneak up on his six. Clearly, he hadn't lost his field agent skills in the last year.

Glaring at Tony for scaring the crap out of him and making him feel like an amateur for getting caught tailing him, he responded snarkily. As much as he needed to crawl to the asshole and get him onside, DiNozzo always managed to rub him up the wrong way with his smug arrogance. Reminding him that Kayla, Jarred and yes, even Jackie, thought he was the best thing since sliced bread and had sucked up to the buffoon and come home replete with autographs was galling to the supremely self-confident director and made him feel ill. But before he could formulate a politic reply, the ex-agent leapt into the breach.

"Ya know, Leon, you might want to think about organising some extra-curricular classes for your agents about how to tail a quarry discreetly, and while you're at it, sign yourself up for those classes, too. Well, unless you were trying to be obvious about following me around ever since filming started? If that was your agenda, 'good job', cuz I absolutely noticed you on the very first day we arrived. So kind of you to make me feel welcome," he smiled that blinding goofy grin that was guaranteed to provoke all of Vance's prejudices that he was trying hard to repress.

Chewing hard on his cheek as a way of tamping down his anger, the director glared at his former agent, forgetting that the man was impervious to it. Anyone who had managed to withstand Gibbs' death ray Marine stare for almost eight years, and even give as good as he got on occasion, wouldn't be easily intimidated. Knowing he had to say something, he forced down his fury. "Hoping to talk to you alone, DiNozzo," he managed, hating himself for the fact he was going to beg this obnoxious individual to return so he could help save his career.

The ex-detective cocked an eyebrow in mock astonishment, but Vance got the impression he was all that surprised. "Well, I know you aren't looking for an autograph, Leon, so let's not waste each other's time, since I know you can't stand me, and believe me, the feeling's mutual. So, what did you want to talk to me about?"

Vance growled, as the insufferable fool had backed him into a corner where any finesse or manipulation was difficult to pull off. The man seemingly didn't understand the intricate dance that was politics… that or he was simply too self-absorbed to care. Still, Leon was the one that needed him, so DiNozzo held all the cards, and he had to keep telling himself that. Swallowing the rising gorge that made him long to pummel the smug buffoon, he took a few deep cleansing breaths before proceeding. "Well, actually I was hoping that you'd consider coming on board as a consultant, DiNozzo. Maybe you could conduct some training sessions on effective surveillance techniques and how to evade a tail. As you point out, we could do with some retraining, and I'd really like to know how you managed to sneak up on me. I see you haven't lost any of your undercover skills in the last year since you left."

DiNozzo started laughing so hard he plonked his butt down on the grass beside the path. Tears streaming down his face, he held onto his gut, knowing that he was pissing off his companion majorly, but seeming not to care at all. "Oh, so the rumours of your imminent demise are obviously not as exaggerated as I assumed, Leon. Things have to be truly dire if you are coming cap in hand to beg me to come back. That's gotta give ya the biggest damn case of heartburn imaginable. Guess that explains the stalking… you WERE procrastinating because you couldn't bring yourself to approach me."

He sobered up and glared at the NCIS Director, who in turn looked as if he was practising for the International Gurning Championship where competitors compete to pull the most bizarre facial expressions. "Tell me, Leon, or will you be using Tyler when you um… retire? Why in the world would you think that I would agree to work for you again? We've already established that we abhor each other. What in the world makes you think that a narcissist like me would want to come back and work with you?"

Trying not to show his shock that Tony knew about his past, he also struggled to keep his temper in check. "We both know that while I may not like you, that doesn't mean you are a narcissist, a dilettante perhaps, pampered little rich boy definitely, but after you left I realised exactly how much you did for the agency and the people that work in it that remained unsung… until you weren't there anymore." He managed to stutter out, his face looked like he was sucking lemons.

Chuckling cynically, Tony reached up and patted Vance's arm condescendingly. "Wow, that's gotta smart, Leon, being nice to your sworn enemy, or should I call you Tyler? I never know quite how to address you; Tyler Keith Owens aka Teek or T.K.O. Quite the undercover gig, Director, or did you actually start to believe the lie after all this time? Must have been a shock when the real Leon Vance turned up dead? And if I can give you a little bit of advice, not reacting is also just as much of a tell, as overreacting. Let me give you a little tip, Tylon – get it? That's a combination of Leon and Tyler. Anyway, Tylon, your initial response should have been, what the devil are you talking about? If I didn't know before, you just confirmed my suspicions. Very sloppy," he lamented, gazing at the furious man benignly.

"Don't know what you're talking about, DiNozzo," Vance growled belatedly.

"Yep, that was pretty good, Tylon, just a couple of minutes too late. You needed to spit it out a couple of minutes earlier. At least no one can accuse you of being a premature ejaculator, Teek. You must be giving the little blue pills a workout I guess? Anyway, I'll bet you're dying to know how the Hell I found out about your little secret, so I'll enlighten you, cuz that's the kind of guy I am. It seems that being such an ambitious bastard, you've made quite a few enemies, apart from Special Agent McCallister, who must be so pissed that you ended up in the big chair when you were supposed to be in a pine box. And it seems that like your predecessor, Jen Shepard, you've managed to piss off the CIA, Tylon . Mm, it sounds like an alien from a Dr. Who episode, don'tcha think?"

Tony stopped and observed the tell-tale pulse of Vance's clenched jaw while he tried to skewer his former agent with the piercing glare of his deep chocolate eyes, although Tony remained unmoved. "Did SecNav ever tell you the CIA sent Gibbs a copy of your secret file? But apparently he just sat on it, so the CIA sent another copy to me. Cat's out of the bag, Tylon, and whoever's ass you managed to get up at the CIA…well, is not gonna go away. Guess they thought I was such a loose cannon that I'd leak it, and your good buddy Davenport might have covered up for you before now, but see here's the thing. Scuttlebutt around the traps is that his skeletons are rattling around the closet trying to get out, too, seems he was playing house with a working girl during Desert Storm and got her in the family way."

The Director wondered if DiNozzo was yanking his chain about Philip Davenport. He hadn't heard anything, but if Philip was vulnerable, it maybe explained a thing or two. God, what a big mess.

"So, if there's nothing else?" Tony stood up lithely, eager to finish up their talk.

The Director swallowed his anger, still trying to process the fact that someone in the CIA was running around with his secret file, knew about his past and was trying to destroy everything that he'd fought so hard for. There was no way he would give in to the bastards. And he knew looking at this infuriating, insufferable idiot, that he was going to have to grovel big time to pull it off, since DiNozzo was not making it easy. "Wait, Tony. You didn't give me an answer, the Agency really needs you right now, your country needs you…I umm, ah… need your help. Come back, please, and help us out."

Tony shook his head. Leon looked like he'd just drunk drain cleaner, or Gibbs' cup of coffee, but he was furious that the slimy manipulator would try to guilt trip him into returning because he was just looking to save his own ass, which was a lost cause anyway. "You know what, Leon? BITE ME! Why don't you ask your protégé? I'm sure a grad of MIT is perfectly capable of filling my pathetic shoes. Ya know, you're nothing but are a bigoted intellectual snob, but you were both jealous because I had the misfortune to be born to two people that had money, but who were biologically unsuitable to pass on their DNA. You and McGee- Hell Ziva, too, were so hung up on the mansion on Long Island that you never listened to the fact that I was disowned when I was twelve. I worked my way through college based on my own hard work and talent, and I brought myself up even before I was kicked out of "paradise", and let me tell you that filthy rich isn't all it's cracked up to be when both your parents aren't likely to be sober by mid-morning and you're a little kid all alone in a mausoleum. I don't owe the Agency or you a thing, not after Shepard lied to me so she could kill her Moby Dick and you used Ziva and me as bait to catch the mole, all the while treating me like dog crap. Clean up your own damned mess!"


	8. Chapter 8

Warnings: Well this time I guess I should warn Gibbs fans who might be offended at Tony's treatment and then again I'd better also warn his detractors who might find this encounter a little anticlimactic but as I said in an earlier A/N I strive to find new ways to write confrontations to make them fresh and wanted to avoid a repeat of the last chapter. Tony shares some thoughts in the next chapter about why he reacts the way that he does.

Gratuities: As usual I have to thank Arress for wrangling my irritating commas into submission and being a sounding board for the story. This chapter and the next are much indebted to my beta for her suggestions and support. I ended up seriously unable to write and in the end was forced to turn to a short story just to get things flowing again. Arress' assistance got me back on track so sorry for the delay but without her help this chapter would have taken a lot longer. Oh yeah and you all know the rules...any mistakes my bad.

A/N Thanks to everyone who left feedback, faved or alerted. I appreciate your support. I think I've said before that writing is a very solitary past time although I guess in some ways the characters in my stories end up becoming real the longer I spend with them (and yeah that does sounds a little creepy). Anyway... feedback is like oxygen to a writer. So thanks again for everyone who takes the time and effort to actually leave feedback for me even if it is just a couple of words. I especially love when someone zeros in on a little gem I've placed into the chapter and someone lets me know that it was noticed and appreciated.

I'm loath to say that the next chapter will be the last one given my track record but I will say that we are getting close . Hope you enjoy :)

What a Difference a Year Makes: 8760 Little Hours

Chapter 8 Ne'er the Twain Shall Meet… Well, maybe Part 3

An hour after his little chat with Leon, sitting with his partner in the trailer he'd been provided on set, Tony was sipping a green tea as he shared the crux of the exchange between him and Leon Vance. "He's always resented me. He seems to think that I had everything handed to me on a silver platter."

Shaking her head at the gall of the Director, Ceinwen gave him a comforting hug, knowing that Tony really liked her getting into his personal space, even if he wasn't keen on being touched by most people. She noticed that although he never said anything, he would tense up fractionally and his eyes would dilate when people encroached, and she figured he probably had never been hugged when he was a kid. "Dumb ass," she spat out. "Surely he didn't expect you to come back again? And that was pretty damned grubby pulling the patriot card. Have you still got that secret file, Babe?"

"It's in a safety deposit box, Lovely. Why?"

"Because… I know plenty of people in the media who'd leap at the story like a Hollywood starlet at cocaine. That's why!"

Tony smiled at her, knowing that a part of her was outraged that Vance had risen to the position of power within a federal agency, but the real reason why she was so furious was because Tony was pissed off and unsettled by his former colleagues and she wanted to hurt to them, make them suffer. Kissing her nose affectionately before moving on to steal a more sensual kiss involving lips and more, he finally surfaced for air. _Damn his weakened lungs!_

"Nah, as much as the bastard deserves to be outed, it would hurt Jackie and the kids. According to Morrow, he and Davenport are on the way out. They're about to be tapped on the shoulder and told to resign before their skeletons are released from the closet. They'll go quietly."

Sighing, Ceinwen admitted that Jackie Vance was a nice woman. "Do you think she knows?"

"Doubt it. I can't see her risking her family like that. Those kids mean the world to her, and they're nice kids too."

Changing the subject, she grinned. "Wish I'd seen Vance's face when you sneaked up behind him."

Tony grinned. "Yeah, the plan worked like a dream. Damn near peed his pants."

A knock on the trailer door and a shouted "Ready for you in five, Mr Paddington," abruptly interrupted their ruminations.

~ What a Difference a Day Makes: 8760 Little Hours ~

"Tony, whatcha got there?" Ceinwen hung over his shoulder, her chin resting gently on his collarbone as she perused the bunch of papers he was looking at.

Rolling his eyes before grinning good naturedly at the woman who had firmly entrenched herself into his heart. That wasn't to say that he didn't still have panic attacks sometimes when he realised what it would mean if anything ever happened to her, but he knew that if he let fear rule him he would end up alone and lonely. After just a few short months together, he remembered what he'd been missing out on. When Wendy broke his heart and he broke his own and Jeanne's hearts, he'd dealt with his grief by denial and avoidance, determined to never put himself in such a vulnerable situation again.

And then Ceinwen came along… kind, caring, beautiful and willing, she was capable of seeing beyond all the smoke and mirrors, to understand that he was fundamentally flawed and yet to trust him in spite of it. She recognised that those very flaws were what had made him who he was and spurred him to help others even as he hid himself because he had learnt not to trust others. She didn't take his flaws and demand he fix them, she simply accepted him the way he was, and it frankly puzzled him because she was the first person he could remember to accept him unconditionally. It made him want to be a better person for her, but he didn't feel pressured to change. It was weird!

And surprisingly, he found it easy to trust her, not just professionally, but to let her see his vulnerabilities, which probably contributed to him falling head over heels for her. It was such a damned relief not to have to worry about being weak in front of her after a lifetime of it being it bashed into his psyche about never showing weakness to the two most significant males in his life. And wasn't it one of life's big cosmic jokes that while his father had always demanded that he apologise for his many inadequacies, Gibbs made him feel even crappier about his failings when his childhood habit of apologising slipped out when he was under pressure or nervous breaking Rule 6. So, it wasn't so surprising that Ceinwen's faith in him affected him so deeply and she didn't accuse him of being weak when he told her he was sorry.

Realising he'd been away with the pixies, he smiled up at her. " Sorry, I zoned out there. Carter sent me the contract for the screen rights to the Deep Six franchise."

Ceinwen raised her eyebrows. "That's a very thick standard contract, Tony, What's in it?"

He grinned and grabbed her pulling her around into his lap and kissing her fondly, before handing her the sheaf of paper. As she flicked through the contract seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she realised why the contract seemed to be oversized. "Why is there a screenplay in there, Babe?"

Chuckling, he filled her in. "Carter says he submitted it when he signed over the film rights. Along with suggestions about who should play the ensemble cast. He must have been burning the candle at both ends."

Snorting as she flipped to the end to see McGee's suggestions for the cast, she gave him an amused smirk. "Delusions of grandeur methinks, hey, Agent Tommy?" She noticed the slightly hurt expression morph into one of devilment that she'd learnt soon after they began working together always meant that he had mayhem on his mind. Resigned to waiting until he was ready to share, she recalled what had brought her into their trailer. Tony wasn't due on set for some close ups until after lunch and there was pizza in the catering tent.

~ What a Difference a Day Makes ~

Waiting impatiently for Tony to finish rehearsing his choreographed fight scene with the stunt co-ordinator and his stunt double on hand, Ceinwen was picturing the scene in her mind. She knew that Tony thought it was a dumb scene, but the movie wasn't exactly Shakespeare. Anthony Paddington had to start somewhere and it was just unfortunate that Tony had worked for so many years for the Navy and could pick apart all the procedural rules being flouted by the director and the scriptwriters in this less than historically accurate film. She was trying to mollify him, and luckily after protesting the unlikelihood of the scene where he and the German spy battled each other with Ceremonial Swords, he'd finally agreed that if it was nonnegotiable, he at least wanted to do the stunt himself. Tony knew that he would have to do a lot of training and rehearsal for the scene, and at least it would keep him busy, too busy to pick apart the plot holes.

Tony's handler was surprised and pleased to discover that he'd done a fair bit of fencing at RIMA and had retained quite a lot of his technique. When she mentioned it to him after he'd finished running through the fight sequence for the umpteenth time before calling time he grinned. "It was during my Douglas Fairbanks' movies phase that I got hooked on fencing. Shame about the dorky uniforms, though."

Ceinwen grinned wickedly. "Oh, I don't know, I think I might enjoy the view… and I bet Matt would, too," she teased him, giggling. "Tell me you've still got them, Tony?" She pleaded.

Mock scowling, he smacked her on the butt lightly. "Behave," he admonished her. "Y'know we had a case years ago that involved Ceremonial Swords and a dead sailor. I got to go to Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Puerto Rico because they were illegally selling Officers' Swords to enlisted sailors. These baby sailors were playing this MMORPG, and then started playing with swords for real when they realised they were both on the same ship. It was back when Cate was still a probie agent, and she was horrified that we all had to share a cabin together. So naïve when she started."

Looking at her sideways, he changed the subject. "Did you want something, Lovely, or did you just come to watch me practice?"

She grinned. "Yep, to both questions. I missed the last ambush regarding Operation Stalk the Stalker/ Shadow the Shadower. Can I be in on the next one?"

He grinned, right back at her. "I don't know. Can you?" He teased.

Poking out her tongue at him she rolled her eyes. Falling to her knees she began pleading theatrically, hamming it up in a performance worthy of a children's pantomime and drawing plenty of amused looks from the various crew members. Laughing boisterously, he dragged her off the floor, agreeing she could be there when he ambushed Gibbs. Truthfully, he would feel better having her close by. She probably sensed that having him following Tony around was making him pretty antsy.

"Okay, Ceinwen, we'll ambush him by the coffee cart down near the running track. I'll meet you there after I do the switch with Jake. Worked pretty well the last time, Sweet Cheeks," he observed, referring to his stand-in, Jacob Somers. "Once the sub takes the field and we swap clothes, I'll slip out and meet you near the coffee cart and we'll ambush him. Okay… questions?" He queried?

Ceinwen shook her head, smiling at the thought of finally meeting Leroy Jethro Gibbs. She couldn't wait for Tony to give him a piece of his mind. According to Tony's friend, Rocky Balboa, Leon Vance was still in an evil mood, even reducing one of the new security staff members to tears with his temper tantrums. She was really sorry she'd missed it.

~ What a Difference a Day Makes ~

Tony was running sans Ceinwen this morning. It was just him and the personal trainer, Matt, and as they ran they swapped opinions on the NBL teams for the season, since Matt was almost as big a fan as his client. They'd even started up a pick-up game amongst the crew, who seemed a bit surprised that Tony wanted to hang out with them playing ball. Knowing that Gibbs was following along behind them unsuspectingly like the bulldog that he was when he got a bone between his teeth, he prepared himself mentally for their skirmish.

Approaching the amenities block, he yelled out to Matt. "Hey, Man, I'm busting. I need to take a leak."

Ignoring the eye rolling from his trainer, he ducked into the toilet block and shed his exercise gear and baseball cap and changing into the jeans, T-Shirt and hoodie that his film stand-in, Jake, had waiting for him, before Jake quickly dressed in Tony's exercise clothes. Shoving his cap onto Jake's head, Tony grinned and gave him a thumb's up. Jake was disappointed that he didn't get a chance to hang out with Ceinwen this time around, joking that they'd had a good time making out together before. Tony had responded by saying that she'd obviously had such a good time that she refused to run with him a second time and Jake had pretended to be gutted. Telling him he was an ass, he slapped him gently on the back and Tony slipped out a couple of seconds behind him. As his stand in, Jake did a lot of preparatory blocking of scenes for close-up shots for him and for some of the filming of scenes that didn't need close-ups. The two of them were similar enough in appearance to pass for each other in a cursory examination, but up close the substitution would be obvious.

Taking a shortcut across the grass to get ahead of the Jake pretending to be Tony and Matt the personal trainer dog and pony show and their faithful tail, he rendezvoused with his handler (and he admitted to himself happily she was so much more than that) as they waited for the procession to catch up with them. As they ran past, Tony prepared to waylay Gibbs and confront him, but his Lovely was quicker. She stuck out her foot and deliberately tripped up the famous Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and while he collapsed heavily on the grass all tangled up in his limbs, she smiled at her partner innocently, shrugging before turning to Gibbs.

"Oh, oops, my bad… what a klutz I am, Gibbs… It is Gibbs isn't it?" Holding out her hand to the man to shake it how do you do, even though he was still lying prone on the ground, she smiled her piranha smirk that had been honed into that of a predator from dealing with the Hollywood elite. That was when Gibbs paled as he noticed Tony, and he looked shocked as he saw Matt and Jake aka the Tony doppelganger running along the path ahead. Glaring at everyone, he increased the intensity as Ceinwen grinned at Tony who was amused, if a little shocked, that his Lovely had deliberately tripped his old boss.

Gibbs ignored her outstretched hand and scrabbled to his feet, annoyed to have been placed at a height disadvantage, and even worse, to have been made to look foolish. For someone who thrived on psychologically intimidating his opponents, loss of face was a serious blow to his ego.

Looking at Ceinwen, who smiled sweetly at Gibbs with her _I'm as pure as the driven snow_ expression, Tony gave her an admiring look. _Man, talk about sneaky! _Grabbing her playfully and giving her a breath-stealing lip lock, Gibbs interrupted, growling, "Keep it in your pants, DiNozzo."

Tony wiggled his eyebrows cheekily. "Jealous, Gibbs?"He dropped the amusement and glared at Gibbs before switching to their silent communication mode, letting his facial expression demand, _"What's with the stalking?"_

Gibbs grunted, which although Tony was rusty in Gibbs-ese if he wasn't mistaken meant: 'To g_et ya back where ya belong, on my six'._ Well, either it was that or else '_my six is getting long, wet your back,'_ which on second thoughts didn't sound terribly plausible.

Going with the first option he glared back at Gibbs which meant in SFA DiNozzo-ese, _"Kiss my ass, Boss."_

Grinning with a wolfish leer, Gibbs launched himself at his former agent, clearly deprived of being able to head slap him for over a year and in severe withdrawal. Grabbing his fist long before it connected with his head and squeezing it harder than was strictly necessary, Tony made it clear that he wasn't going to cop any of Gibbs' crap.

_Need you watching my six, no one else I trust, DiNozzo, _the functional mute maintained stoically, mostly sans words with the odd grunt/growl thrown in for emphasis.

Of course, this made interpreting Gibbs-ese a bit hit or miss, especially when he was so out of practice, but it was all coming back (just like a bad takeout meal). '_Too bad, so sad I can't say the same about you."_

Nodding, disappointed, but not seeming too surprised, Gibbs' arctic glare softened somewhat and he gave a frustrated groan that Tony interpreted as '_coulda…maybe done it different,'_ which Tony figured was as close to an insincere apology as he was ever likely to get from his former mentor. Being ever the pragmatist, he accepted it for what it was.

'_Damn straight!' _he responded silently as he looked across at Ceinwen who was staring at them both, confused. She was perceptive enough to pick up the strong passions, but not the nonverbal subtext beyond their emotions since she'd never met Gibbs before. And if he was fair, even people that knew Gibbs well couldn't speak Gibbs-ese.

Tony decided that he didn't really have anything left to say to the man who had been such a major influence in his life for so long. He actually felt at peace after having faced all his demons, with the exception of a certain Israeli assassin who had apparently gone down on a ship called the Damocles off the coast of Somalia. Extending his hand to Gibbs who shook it, he observed, "Good talk," before smiling at his supportive handler, grateful for her presence.

Obviously deciding that all was forgiven, Gibbs zeroed in for a parting head slap, clearly unable to control himself. Shaking his head at the foolhardiness of the man, Tony feinted and slipped under Gibbs' arm, spinning around 180 degrees so he was facing the Marine's six, sorely tempted to deliver a head slap of his own. But there was no need, since on the somewhat uneven ground when Jethro ended up slapping the air, he overbalanced and ended up ass over turkey for the second time in five minutes.

~ What a Difference a Day Makes ~

Glaring up at his former senior field agent who used to leap to obey him, his former protégé who used to think the sun rose out of Gibbs' ass, Jethro growled, frustrated and disappointed. Twice DiNozzo had evaded his head slaps with graceful catlike ease, and Gibbs had the sudden realisation that all those times he thought he was sneaking up on him might have been more a case of DiNozzo toying with him. After all, he had set him up with a clever sting and then ambushed him very effectively.

A wave of sadness washed over him when he realised that Tony was the only one who had ever stood up to him, ever bothered to learn how to communicate without words, dared to call him on his crap, ever had the nerve to tease him or make him laugh. Or if it came down to it, the only one who had ever been able to get one over him. Finally realising just how much he'd underestimated his protégé and taken him for granted, he also recognised too late, just how much he'd lost.

Looking across at the calm expression of the former agent and the stormy glare of the blonde woman with the blonde locks and curvy figure, he realised that Tony was happy, and he felt of twinge of envy that he'd found someone that gave him that contented look. He remembered that look, that feeling. He'd had it with Shannon for over a decade of his life, and he missed it. He looked at DiNozzo's girlfriend closely, noting that she was a beautiful woman with an inner core of steel that reminded him of his own soul mate. Forgetting that the blonde had deliberately tripped him up, he accepted her hand to help pull himself up, as his knee didn't appreciate hitting the deck twice, even if his vanity didn't want to admit he could do with a little help.

Afterwards he claimed that it was the smell of the coffee that distracted him which had suddenly appeared in her hand like a conjurer. And in his defence it had been almost an hour since he'd drunk his last cup, but as she was helping him up the woman, who DiNozzo hadn't even introduced, stumbled against him and spilled the scalding hot beverage all over him. Clucking apologetically and fussing with the ubiquitous clean hanky, she took the opportunity to lean up close and personal, her lips brushing up against his ear.

"Stay away from him. You hurt him again and I'll crush your nuts." Withdrawing from his personal space, she smiled sweetly. "I'm such a klutz. Send me the dry cleaning bill, sugar. Keep the handkerchief… no, I insist."

Grabbing DiNozzo by the hand, she smiled a breathtakingly loving smile at him. "We'd better head back, Babe. Interior shots this afternoon and you need to head to make-up."

Gibbs watched in shock as the woman who had just exhibited a degree of menace that Ziva David would have heartily approved of, morphed back into demure girlfriend, or whoever the Hell she was. Chuckling in spite of his discomfort and ire at being threatened by a perfect stranger, he couldn't help but be reminded of a certain red-headed spitfire of his own acquaintance. One he mourned each and every day since she'd left him.

Watching them nostalgically as they strolled across the grass arm in arm, he caught a snatch of conversation. "That's it, Babe? All that angst and all that planning and that's it? Four freakin' words? JEALOUS GIBBS and GOOD TALK? Really? That's ALL you wanted to say?"

Hearing the lower bass tones from DiNozzo's speech but not the words, Gibbs saw him smiling goofily at her. He said something before teasingly kissing each eye, the tip of her delicate nose and finally her lips. He really could keep his hands off her. As they walked away, Gibbs heard her say, "I WILL NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS UNDERSTAND GUYS!"

Oh, yeah, Shannon definitely. Bet she'd love that one. Looks like DiNozzo had found himself a keeper!


End file.
